Greene - Unfortunate - Traveller

THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER 1 _____________________________________________________________________________________
The Unfortunate Traveller or The Life of Jack Wilton. Qui audiunt audita dicunt. Tho. Nashe. London. Printed by T. Scarlet for C. Burby, & are to be sold at his shop adjoining to the Exchange. 1594.
To the right honourable Lord Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield. Ingenuous honourable Lord, I know not what blind custom methodical antiquity hath thrust upon us, to dedicate such books as we publish to one great man or other, in which respect, lest any man should challenge these my papers as goods uncustomed, and so extend upon them as forfeit to contempt, to the seal of your excellent censure, lo, here I present them to be seen and allowed. Prize them as high or as low as you list; if you set any price on them, I hold my labour well satisfied. Long have I desired to approve my wit unto you. My reverent dutiful thoughts (even from their infancy) have been retainers to your glory. Now at last I have enforced an opportunity to plead my devoted mind. All that in this fantastical treatise I can promise is some reasonable conveyance of history, & variety of mirth. By divers of my good friends have I been dealt with to employ my dull pen in this kind, it being a clean different vein from other my former courses of writing. How well or ill I have done in it I am ignorant (the eye that sees round about itself, sees not into itself); only your Honours applauding encouragement hath power to make me arrogant. Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit, both in heroical resolution and matters of conceit. Unreprievably perisheth that book whatsoever to waste-paper which on the diamond rock of your judgement disasterly chanceth to be shipwrecked. A dear lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of poets as of poets themselves. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe myself, though now and then I speak English; that small brain I have to no further use I convert, save to be kind to my friends and fatal to my enemies. A new brain, a new wit, a new style, a new soul will I get me, to canonize your name to posterity, if in this my first attempt I be not taxed of presumption. Of your gracious favour I despair not, for I am not altogether fames outcast. This handful of leaves I offer to your view, to the leaves on trees I compare, which as they cannot grow of themselves except they have some branches or boughs to cleave to, & with whose juice and sap they be evermore recreated & nourished, so except these unpolished leaves of mine have some branch of nobility whereon to depend and cleave, and with the vigorous nutriment of whose authorized commendation they may be continually fostered and refreshed, never will they grow to the worlds good liking, but forthwith fade and die on the first hour of their birth. Your Lordship is the large spreading branch of renown from whence these my idle leaves seek to derive their whole nourishing; it resteth you either scornfully shake them off as worm-eaten & worthless, or in pity preserve them and cherish them for some little summer fruit you hope to find amongst them. Your Honours in all humble service, Tho: Nashe.
To the Gentlemen Readers. Gentlemen, in my absence (through the printers oversight and my bad writing) in the leaves of C. and D. these errors are overslipped. C, page 2, line 33, for sweating, read sneaking; page 3, line 1, for hogs, read bars; line 7, for Calipsus, read Rhaesus; page 4, line 34, for live, read I live; page 5, line 14, for upon his, read upon him his; page 7, line 13, for drilled read dived; line 22, for colour, read collar nor his hatband. D, page 1, line 2, for black read cape; line 5, for fastens, read thirleth; line 7, for badge, read budge; line 8, for shin, read chin; line 11, for in this begun, read thinking in; page 3, line 33, for increased then, read enclosed them; page 5, line 8, for thread button, read burst like a thread bottom; page 8, line 3, for Essa read Ossa; line 4, for dissolution read desolation; line 13, between also and but, read if you know Christianity, you know the Fathers of the Church also; line 18, for quocunque read qua gente. Other literal faults there are which I omit. Yours, T.N.
The Induction to the Dapper Monsieur Pages of the Court. Gallant squires, have amongst you; at mumchance I mean not, for so I might chance come too short commons, but at nouus, noua, nouum, which is in English, news of the maker. A proper fellow-page of yours called Jack Wilton by me commends him unto you, and hath bequeathed for waste-paper here amongst you certain pages of his misfortunes. In any case, keep them preciously as a privy token of his goodwill towards you. If there be some better than other, he craves you would honour them in their death so much as to dry & kindle tobacco with them; for a need he permits you to wrap velvet pantofles in them also, so they be not woe-begone at the heels, or weather-beaten, like a black head with grey hairs, or mangy at the toes, like an ape about the mouth. But as you love good-fellowship and ambs-ace, rather turn them to stop mustard-pots than the grocers should have one patch of them to wrap mace in; a strong, hot, costly spice it is, which above all things he hates. To any use about meat & drink put them to and spare not, for they cannot do their country better service. Printers are mad whoresons; allow them some of them for napkins. Jost a little nearer to the matter & the purpose. Memorandum: every one of you, after the perusing of this pamphlet, is to provide him a case of poniards, that if you come in company with any man which shall dispraise it or speak against it, you may straight cry Sic respondeo, and give him the stockado. It stands not with your honours (I assure ye) to have a gentleman and a page abused in his absence. Secondly, whereas you were wont to swear men on a pantofle to be true to your puissant order, you shall swear them on nothing but this chronicle of the king of pages henceforward. Thirdly, it shall be lawful for any whatsoever to play with false dice in a corner on the cover of this foresaid Acts and Monuments. None of the fraternity of the Minorites shall refuse it for a pawn in the times of famine and necessity. Every stationers stall they pass by, whether by day or by night, they shall put off their hats to, and make a low leg, in regard their grand printed capitano is there entombed. It shall be flat treason for any of this forementioned catalogue of the point-trussers once to name him within forty foot of an ale-house; marry, the tavern is honourable. Many special grave articles more had I to give you in charge, which your wisdoms waiting together at the bottom of the great chamber stairs, or sitting in a porch (your parliament house) may better consider of than I can deliver; only let this suffice for a taste to the text, and a bit to pull on a good wit with, as a rasher on the coals is to pull on a cup of wine. Hey-pass, come aloft; every man of you take your places, and hear Jack Wilton tell his own tale.
The Unfortunate Traveller About that time that the terror of the world and fever quartan of the French, Henry the Eighth (the only true subject of chronicles) advanced his standard against the two hundred and fifty towers of Tournay and Terouanne, and had the Emperor and all the nobility of Flanders, Holland & Brabant as mercenary attendants on his full-sailed fortune, I, Jack Wilton (a gentleman at least) was a certain kind of an appendix or page belonging or appertaining in or unto the confines of the English court, where what my credit was, a number of my creditors that I cozened can testify; Coelum petimus stultitia, which of us all is not a sinner? Be it known to as many as will pay money enough to peruse my story, that I followed the court or the camp, or the camp and the court, when Terouanne lost her maidenhead, and opened her gates to more than Jane Tross did. There did I (soft, let me drink before I go any further) reign sole king of the cans and blackjacks, prince of the pygmies, county palatine of clean straw and provant, and, to conclude, lord high regent of rashers of the coals and red herring cobs. Paulo maiora canamus. Well, to the purpose. What stratagemical acts and monuments do you think an egregious infant of my years might enact? You will say it were sufficient if he slur a die, pawn his master to the utmost penny, and minister the oath of the pantofle artificially. These are signs of good education, I must confess, and arguments of In grace and virtue to proceed. Oh, but Aliquid latet quod non patet, theres a further path I must trace; examples confirm; list, lordings, to my proceedings. Whosoever is acquainted with the state of a camp understands that in it be many quarters, and yet not so many as on London bridge. In those quarters are many companies; much company, much knavery, as true as that old adage, Much courtesy, much subtlety. Those companies, like a great deal of corn, do yield some chaff; the corn are cormorants, the chaff are good-fellows, which are quickly blown to nothing with bearing a light heart in a light purse. Amongst this chaff was I winnowing my wits to live merrily, and by my troth, so I did; the prince could but command men spend their blood in his service; I could make them spend all the money they had for my pleasure. But poverty in the end parts friends; though I was prince of their purses, & exacted of my unthrift subjects as much liquid allegiance as any Kaiser in the world could do, yet where it is not to be had, the king must lose his right; want cannot be withstood; men can do no more than they can do. What remained then but the foxs case must help, when the lions skin is out at the elbows? There was a lord in the camp, let him be a Lord of Misrule if you will, for he kept a plain ale-house without welt or guard of any ivy-bush, and sold cider and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came (at the very name of cider I can but sigh, there is so much of it in Rhenish wine now-a-days). Well, Tendit ad sydera virtus, theres great virtue belongs (I can tell you) to a cup of cider, and very good men have sold it, and at sea it is aqua coelestis, but thats neither here nor there; if it had no other patron but this peer of quartpots to authorize it, it were sufficient. This great lord, this worthy lord, this noble lord, thought no scorn (Lord, have mercy upon us) to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of this dainty liquor, & yet he was an old servitor, a cavalier of an ancient house, as might appear by the arms of his ancestors, drawn very amiably in chalk on the inside of his tent door.
He and no other was the man I chose out to damn with a lewd moneyless device, for coming to him on a day as he was counting his barrels and setting the price in chalk on the head of them, I did my duty very devoutly, and told his aly Honour I had matters of some secrecy to impart unto him, if it pleased him to grant me private audience. With me, young Wilton, qd. he; marry, and shalt. Bring us a pint of cider of a fresh tap into the Three Cups here, wash the pot; so into a back room he led me, where after he had spit on his finger, and picked off two or three motes off his old moth-eaten velvet cap, and sponged and wrung all the rheumatic drivel from his ill-favoured goats beard, he bade me declare my mind, and thereupon he drank to me on the same. I up with a long circumstance, alias a cunning shift of the seventeens, and discoursed unto him what entire affection I had borne him time out of mind, partly for the high descent and lineage from whence he sprung, and partly for the tender care and provident respect he had of poor soldiers, that, whereas the vastity of that place (which afforded them no indifferent supply of drink or of victuals) might humble them to some extremity, and so weaken their hands, he vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualler to the camp (a rare example of magnificence and honourable courtesy), and diligently provided that without far travel every man might for his money have cider and cheese his belly-ful; nor did he sell his cheese by the wey only, or his cider by the great, but abased himself with his own hands to take a shoemakers knife (a homely instrument for such a high personage to touch), and cut it out equally, like a true justiciary, in little pennyworths that it would do a man good for to look upon. So likewise of his cider, the poor man might have his moderate draught of it (as there is a moderation in all things) as well for his doit or his dandiprat as the rich man for his half-sou or his denier. Not so much, quoth I, but this tapsters linen apron, which you wear to protect your apparel from the imperfections of the spigot, most amply bewrays your lowly mind. I speak it with tears, too few such noblemen have we that will draw drink in linen aprons. Why, you are every childs fellow; any man that comes under the name of a soldier and a good-fellow, you will sit and bear company to the last pot, yea, and you take in as good part the homely phrase of Mine host, heres to you, as if one saluted you by all the titles of your barony. These considerations, I say, which the world suffers to slip by in the channel of forgetfulness, have moved me, in ardent zeal of your welfare, to forewarn you of some dangers that have beset you and your barrels. At the name of dangers he start up, and bounced with his fist on the board so hard that his tapster, overhearing him, cried, Anon, anon, sir, by and by, and came and made a low leg and asked him what he lacked. He was ready to have stricken his tapster for interrupting him in attention of this his so much desired relation, but for fear of displeasing me he moderated his fury, & only sending for the other fresh pint, willed him look to the bar, & come when he is called, with a devils name. Well at his earnest importunity, after I had moistened my lips to make my lie run glib to his journeys end, forward I went as followeth. It chanced me the other night, amongst other pages, to attend where the King, with his lords and many chief leaders, sat in council; there, amongst sundry serious matters that were debated, and intelligences from the enemy given up, it was privily informed (no villains to these privy informers) that you, even you that I now speak to, had (O, would I had no tongue to tell the rest; by this drink it grieves me so I am not able to repeat it). Now was my drunken lord ready to hang himself for the end of the full point, and over my neck he throws himself very lubberly, and entreated me, as I was a proper young gentleman, and ever looked for pleasure at his
hands, soon to rid him out of this hell of suspense, and resolve him of the rest; then fell he on his knees, wrung his hands, and I think, on my conscience, wept out all the cider that he had drunk in a week before; to move me to have pity on him he rose & put his rusty ring on my finger, gave me his greasy purse with that single money that was in it, promised to make me his heir, and a thousand more favours, if I would expire the misery of his unspeakable tormenting uncertainty. I being by nature inclined to mercy (for indeed I knew two or three good wenches of that name), bade him harden his ears, and not make his eyes abortive before their time, and he should have the inside of my breast turned outward, hear such a tale as would tempt the utmost strength of life to attend it and not die in the midst of it. Why (quoth I), myself that am but a poor childish well-willer of yours, with the very thought that a man of your desert and state by a number of peasants and varlets should be so injuriously abused in hugger-mugger, have wept all my urine upwards. The wheel under our city bridge carries not so much water over the city as my brain hath welled forth gushing streams of sorrow; I have wept so immoderately and lavishly that I thought verily my palate had been turned to Pissing Conduit in London. My eyes have been drunk, outrageously drunk, with giving but ordinary intercourse, through their sea-circled islands, to my distilling dreariment. What shall I say? That which malice hath said is the mere overthrow and murder of your days. Change not your colour; none can slander a clear conscience to itself; receive all your fraught of misfortune at once. It is buzzed in the Kings head that you are a secret friend to the enemy, and under pretence of getting a licence to furnish the camp with cider and suchlike provant, you have furnished the enemy, & in empty barrels sent letters of discovery and corn innumerable. I might well have left here, for by this time his white liver had mixed itself with the white of his eye, and both were turned upwards, as if they had offered themselves a fair white for death to shoot at. The troth was, I was very loath mine host and I should part with dry lips, wherefore the best means that I could imagine to wake him out of his trance was to cry loud in his ear, Ho, host, whats to pay; will no man look to the reckoning here? And in plain verity, it took expected effect, for with the noise he started and bustled, like a man that had been scared with fire out of his sleep, and ran hastily to his tapster, and allto-belaboured him about the ears for letting gentlemen call so long and not look in to them. Presently he remembered himself, and had like to fall into his memento again, but that I met him half-way, and asked his Lordship what he meant to slip his neck out of the collar so suddenly, and, being revived, strike his tapster so hastily. Oh (quoth he), I am bought and sold for doing my country such good service as I have done. They are afraid of me because my good deeds have brought me into such estimation with the commonalty. I see, I see, it is not for the lamb to live with the wolf. The world is well amended (thought I) with your cidership; such another forty years nap together as Epimenides had would make you a perfect wise man. Answer me (quoth he), my wise young Wilton; is it true that I am thus underhand dead and buried by these bad tongues?
Nay (quoth I), you shall pardon me, for I have spoken too much already; no definitive sentence of death shall march out of my well-meaning lips; they have but lately sucked milk, and shall they so suddenly change their food, and seek after blood? Oh, but (quoth he), a mans friend is his friend; fill the other pint, tapster; what said the King? Did he believe it when he heard it? I pray thee, say; I swear by my nobility, none in the world shall ever be made privy that I received any light of this matter by thee. That firm affiance (quoth I) had I in you before, or else I would never have gone so far over the shoes to pluck you out of the mire. Not to make many words (since you will needs know), the King says flatly you are a miser and a snudge, and he never hoped better of you. Nay, then (quoth he), questionless some planet that loves not cider hath conspired against me. Moreover, which is worse, the King hath vowed to give Terouanne one hot breakfast only with the bungs that he will pluck out of your barrels. I cannot stay at this time to report each circumstance that passed, but the only counsel that my long-cherished kind inclination can possibly contrive, is now in your old days to be liberal; such victuals or provision as you have, presently distribute it frankly amongst poor soldiers; I would let them burst their bellies with cider, and bathe in it, before I would run into my princes ill opinion for a whole sea of it. The hunter pursuing the beaver for his stones, he bites them off, and leaves them behind for him to gather up, whereby he lives quiet. If greedy hunters and hungry tale-tellers pursue you, it is for a little pelf that you have; cast it behind you, neglect it, let them have it, lest it breed a farther inconvenience. Credit my advice, you shall find in prophetical; and thus have I discharged the part of a poor friend. With some few like phrases of ceremony, your Honours poor suppliant and so forth, and Farewell, my good youth, I thank thee and will remember thee, we parted. But the next day I think we had a dole of cider, cider in bowls, in scuppets, in helmets, and, to conclude, if a man would have filled his boots full, there he might have had it; provant thrust itself into poor soldiers pockets, whether they would or no. We made five peals of shot into the town together of nothing but spigots and faucets of discarded empty barrels; every underfoot soldier had a distenanted tun, as Diogenes had his tub, to sleep in. I myself got as many confiscated tapsters aprons as made me a tent as big as any ordinary commanders in the field. But in conclusion, my well-beloved baron of double beer got him humbly on his marrowbones to the King, and complained he was old and stricken in years, and had never an heir to cast at a dog, wherefore if it might please his Majesty to take his lands into his hands, and allow him some reasonable pension to live, he should be marvelously well pleased; as for wars, he was weary of them, yet as long as his Highness ventured his own person, he would not flinch a foot, but make his withered body a buckler to bear off any blow advanced against him. The King, marvelling at this alteration of his cider merchant (for so he often pleasantly termed him), with a little farther talk, bolted out the whole complotment. Then was I pitifully whipped for my holiday lie, though they made themselves merry with it many a winters evening after.
For all this, his good ass-headed Honour, mine host, persevered in his former request to the King to accept his lands, & allow him a beadsmanry or out-brothership of brachet, which through his vehement instancy took effect, and the King jestingly said, since he would needs have it so, he would distrain on part of his land for impost of cider, which he was behind with. This was one of my famous achievements, insomuch as I never light upon the like famous fool, but I have done a thousand better jests, if they had been booked in order as they were begotten. It is pity posterity should be deprived of such precious records, & yet there is no remedy, and yet there is too, for when all fails, welfare a good memory. Gentle readers (look you be gentle now, since I have called you so), as freely as my knavery was mine own, it shall be yours to use in the way of honesty. Even in this expedition of Terouanne (for the King stood not long a-thrumming of buttons there), it happened me fall in (I would it had fallen out otherwise, for his sake) with an ugly mechanical captain. You must think in an army, where truncheons are in their state-house, it is a flat stab once to name a captain without cap in hand. Well, suppose he was a captain, and had never a good cap of his own, but I was fain to lend him one of my Lords cast velvet caps, and a weather-beaten feather wherewith he threatened his soldiers afar off, as Jupiter is said, with the shaking of his hair, to make heaven & earth to quake. Suppose out of the parings of a pair of false dice I apparelled both him and myself many a time and oft, and surely, not to slander the devil, if any man ever deserved the gold dice the king of the Parthians sent to Demetrius, it was I; I had the right vein of sucking up a die twixt the dints of my fingers; not a crevice in my hand but could swallow a quarter-trey for a need; in the line of life many a dead lift did there lurk, but it was nothing towards the maintenance of a family. This Monsieur Capitano eat up the cream of my earnings, and Crede mihi, res est ingeniosa dare, any man is a fine fellow as long as he hath any money in his purse. That money is like the marigold, which opens and shuts with the sun; if fortune smileth or one be in favour, it floweth; if the evening of age comes on, or he falls into disgrace, it fadeth and is not to be found. I was my crafts master, though I was but young, and could as soon decline Nominatiuo hic asinus as a greater clerk, wherefore I thought it not convenient my soldado should have my purse any longer for his drum to play upon, but I would give him Jack Drums entertainment, and send him packing. This was my plot: I knew a piece of service of intelligence which was presently to be done that required a man with all his five senses to effect it, and would overthrow any fool that should undertake it; to this service did I animate and egg my foresaid costs and changes, alias, Seignior Velvet-cap, whose head was not encumbered with too much forecast, and coming to him in his cabin about dinner-time, where I found him very devoutly paring of his nails for want of other repast, I entertained him with this solemn oration: Captain, you perceive how near both of us are driven; the dice of late are grown as melancholy as a dog; highmen and lowmen both prosper alike, langrets, fulhams, and all
the whole fellowship of them will not afford a man his dinner; some other means must be invented to prevent imminent extremity. My state, you are not ignorant, depends on trencher-service; your advancement must be derived from the valour of your arm. In the delays of siege, desert hardly gets a day of hearing; tis gowns must direct and guns enact all the wars that is to be made against walls. Resteth no way for you to climb suddenly but by doing some rare stratagem, the like not before heard of, and fitly at this time occasion is offered. There is a feat the King is desirous to have wrought on some great man of the enemys side; marry, it requireth not so much resolution as discretion to bring it to pass, and yet resolution enough should be shown in it too, being so full of hazardous jeopardy as it is. Hark in your ear, thus it is: without more drumbling or pausing, if you will undertake it, and work it through-stitch (as you may, ere the King hath determined which way to go about it), I warrant you are made while you live, you need not care which way your staff falls; if it prove not so, then cut off my head. Oh, my auditors, had you seen him how he stretched out his limbs, scratched his scabbed elbows at this speech, how he set his cap over his eyebrows like a politician, and then folded his arms one in another, and nodded with the head, as who would say, Let the French beware, for they shall find me a devil. If (I say) you had seen but half the actions that he used, of shrugging up his shoulders, smiling scornfully, playing with his fingers on his buttons, and biting the lip, you would have laughed your face and your knees together. The iron being hot, I thought to lay on load, for in any case I would not have his humour cool. As before I laid open unto him the brief sum of the service, so now I began to urge the honourableness of it, and what a rare thing it was to be a right politician, how much esteemed of kings & princes, and how divers of mean parentage have come to be monarchs by it. Then I discoursed of the qualities and properties of him in every respect, how, like the wolf, he must draw the breath from a man long before he be seen; how, like a hare, he must sleep with his eyes open; how, as the eagle in his flying casts dust in the eyes of crows and other fowls for to blind them, so he must cast dust in the eyes of his enemies, delude their sight by one means or other, that they dive not into his subtleties; how he must be familiar with all, and trust none; drink, carouse and lecher with him out of whom he hopes to wring any matter; swear and forswear, rather than be suspected, and, in a word, have the art of dissembling at his fingers-ends as perfect as any courtier. Perhaps (quoth I) you may have some few greasy cavaliers that will seek to dissuade you from it, and they will not stick to stand on their three-halfpenny honour, swearing and staring that a man were better be a hangman than an intelligencer, and call him a sneaking eavesdropper, a scraping hedge-creeper, and a piperly pickthank, but you must not be discouraged by their talk, for the most part of these beggarly contemners of wit are huge burly-boned butchers like Ajax, good for nothing but to strike right-down blows on a wedge with a cleaving beetle, or stand hammering all day upon bars of iron. The whelps of a bear never grow but sleeping, and these bearwards, having big limbs, shall be preferred though they do nothing. You have read stories (Ill be sworn he never looked in book in his life); how many of the Roman worthies were there that have gone as spials
into their enemies camp? Ulysses, Nestor, Diomed went as spies together in the night into the tents of Rhaesus, and intercepted Dolon, the spy of the Trojans; never any discredited the trade of intelligencers but Judas, and he hanged himself. Danger will put wit into any man. Architas made a wooden dove to fly, by which proportion I see no reason that the veriest block in the world should despair of anything. Though nature be contrary inclined, it may be altered; yet usually those whom she denies her ordinary gifts in one thing, she doubles them in another. That which the ass wants in wit, he hath in honesty; whoever saw him kick or winch, or use any jades tricks; though he live an hundred years, you shall never hear that he breaks pasture. Amongst men, he that hath not a good wit, lightly hath a good iron memory, and he that hath neither of both, hath some bones to carry burdens. Blind men have better noses than other men; the bulls horns serve him as well as hands to fight withal; the lions paws are as good to him as a pole-axe to knock down any that resist him; the boars tushes serve him in better stead than a sword and buckler; what need the snail care for eyes when he feels the way with his two horns as well as if he were as quick-sighted as a decipherer? There is a fish that, having no wings, supports herself in the air with her fins. Admit that you had neither wit nor capacity, as sure, in my judgement, there is none equal unto you in idiotism, yet if you have simplicity and secrecy, serpents themselves will think you a serpent, for what serpent is there but hides his sting, and yet, whatsoever be wanting, a good plausible tongue in such a man of employment can hardly be spared, which, as the forenamed serpent with his winding tail fetcheth in those that come near him, so with a ravishing tale it gathers all mens hearts unto him, which if he have not, let him never look to engender by the mouth, as ravens and doves do, that is, mount or be great by undermining. Sir, I am ascertained that all these imperfections I speak of in you have their natural resiance. I see in your face that you were born, with the swallow, to feed flying, to get much treasure and honour by travel. None so fit as you for so important an enterprise; our vulgar politicians are but flies swimming on the stream of subtlety superficially in comparison of your singularity; their blind narrow eyes cannot pierce into the profundity of hypocrisy; you alone, with Palamede, can pry into Ulysses mad counterfeiting, you can discern Achilles from a chambermaid, though he be decked with his spindle and distaff; as Jove dining with Lycaon could not be beguiled with human flesh dressed like meat, so no human brain may go beyond you, none beguile you; you gull all, all fear you, love you, stoop to you. Therefore, good sir, be ruled by me; stoop your fortune so low as to bequeath yourself wholly to this business. This silver-sounding tale made such sugared harmony in his ears that with the sweet meditation what a more than miraculous politician he should be, and what kingly promotion should come tumbling on him thereby, he could have found in his heart to have packed up his pipes and to have gone to heaven without a bate; yea, he was more inflamed and ravished with it than a young man call Taurimontanus was with the Phrygian melody, who was so incensed and fired therewith that he would needs run presently upon it, and set a courtesans house on fire than had angered him. No remedy there was but I must help to furnish him with money; I did so, as who will not make his enemy a bridge of gold to fly by? Very earnestly he conjured me to make no man living privy to his departure, in regard of his place and charge, and on his honour
assured me his return should be very short and successful. Aye, aye, shorter by the neck (thought I); in the meantime let this be thy posy: I live in hope to scape the rope. Gone he is; God send him good shipping to Wapping, and by this time, if you will, let him be a pitiful poor fellow, and undone forever; for mine own part, if he had been mine own brother I could have done no more for him than I did, for straight after his back was turned, I went in all love and kindness to the marshal general of the field, & certified him that such a man was lately fled to the enemy, & got his place begged for another immediately. What became of him after, you shall hear. To the enemy he went, and offered his service, railing egregiously against the King of England; he swore, as he was a gentleman and a soldier, he would be revenged on him, and let but the King of France follow his counsel, he would drive him from Terouanne walls yet ere three days to an end. All these were good humours, but the tragedy followeth. The French King, hearing of such a prating fellow that was come, desired to see him, but yet he feared treason, willing one of his minions to take upon him his person, & he would stand by as a private person while he was examined. Why should I use any idle delays? In was Captain Gogs Wounds brought, after he was throughly searched; not a louse in his doublet was let pass but was asked Queuela and charged to stand in the Kings name; the moulds of his buttons they turned out to see if they were not bullets covered over with thread; the codpiece in his devils breeches (for they were then in fashion), they said plainly was a case for a pistol; if he had had ever a hobnail in his shoes it had hanged him, and he should never have known who had harmed him, but as luck was, he had no mite of any metal about him, he took part with none of the four ages, neither the golden age, the silver age, the brazen, nor the iron age; only his purse was aged in emptiness, and I think verily a Puritan, for it kept itself from any pollution of crosses. Standing before the supposed king, he was asked what he was, and wherefore he came. To which in a glorious bragging humour he answered that he was a gentleman, a captain commander, a chief leader, that came from the King of England upon discontentment. Questioned of the particular cause, he had not a word to bless himself with, yet fain he would have patched out a polt-foot tale, but (God knows) it had not one true leg to stand on. Then began he to smell on the villain so rammishly that none there but was ready to rent him in pieces, yet the minion king kept in his choler, and propounded unto him further, what of the King of Englands secrets (so advantageable) he was privy to, as might remove him from the siege of Terouanne in three days. He said divers, divers matters which asked longer conference, but in good honesty they were lies which he had not yet stamped. Hereat the true King stepped forth, and commanded to lay hands on the losel, and that he should be tortured to confess the truth, for he was a spy and nothing else. He no sooner saw the wheel and the torments set before him but he cried out like a rascal, and said he was a poor captain in the English camp, suborned by one Jack Wilton (a noblemans page), and no other, to come and kill the French King in a bravery and return, and that he had no other intention in the world. This confession could not choose but move them all to laughter in that he made it as light a matter to kill their king and come back, as to go to Islington and eat a mess of cream
and come home again; nay, and besides, he protested that he had no other intention, as if that were not enough to hang him. Adam never fell till God made fools; all this could not keep his joints from ransacking on the wheel, for they vowed either to make him a confessor or a martyr with a trice; when still he sung all one song, they told the King he was a fool, and that some shrewd head had knavishly wrought on him, wherefore it should stand with his honour to whip him out of the camp and send him home. That persuasion took place, and soundly was he lashed out of their liberties, and sent home by a herald with this message, that so the King his master hoped to whip home all the English fools very shortly; answer was returned that that shortly was a long lie, and they were shrewd fools that should drive the Frenchman out of his kingdom, and make him glad, with Corinthian Dionysius, to play the schoolmaster. The herald being dismissed, our afflicted intelligencer was called coram nobis; how he sped, judge you, but something he was adjudged too. The sparrow for his lechery liveth but a year; he for his treachery was turned on the toe, Plura dolor prohibet. Here let me triumph awhile, and ruminate a line or two on the excellence of my wit, but I will not breathe neither, till I have disfraughted all my knavery. Another Switzer captain that was far gone for want of the wench I led astray most notoriously, for he being a monstrous unthrift of battle-axes (as one that cared not in his anger to bid fly out scuttles to five score of them), and a notable emboweller of quartpots, I came disguised unto him in the form of a half-crown wench, my gown and attire according to the custom then in request. Iwis I had my curtseys in cue, or in quart-pot rather, for they dived into the very entrails of the dust, and I simpered with my countenance like a porridge-pot on the fire when it first begins to seethe. The sobriety of the circumstance is, that after he had courted me and all, and given me the earnest-penny of impiety, some six crowns at the least for an antepast to iniquity, I feigned an impregnable excuse to be gone, and never came at him after. Yet left I not here, but committed a little more scutchery. A company of coistrel clerks (who were in band with Satan, and not of any soldiers collar nor hatband), pinched a number of good minds to Godward of their provant. They would not let a dram of dead pay overslip them; they would not lend a groat of the week to come, to him that had spent his money before this week was done. They outfaced the greatest and most magnanimous servitors in their sincere and finigraphical clean shirts and cuffs. A louse (that was any gentlemans companion) they thought scorn of; their near-bitten(?) beards must in a devils name be dewed every day with rose-water; hogs could have neer a hair on their backs, for making them rubbing-brushes to rouse their crab-lice. They would in no wise permit that the motes in the sunbeams should be full-mouthed beholders of their clean finified apparel; their shoes shined as bright as a slickstone; their hands troubled and foiled more water with washing than the camel doth, that never drinks till the whole stream be troubled. Summarily, never any were so fantastical the one half as they.
My masters, you may conceive of me what you list, but I think confidently I was ordained Gods scourge from above for their dainty finicality. The hour of their punishment could no longer be prorogued, but vengeance must have at them at all adventures. So it was that the most of these above-named goose-quill braggadocios were mere cowards and cravens, and durst not so much as throw a penful of ink into the enemys face, if proof were made; wherefore on the experience of their pusillanimity I thought to raise the foundation of my roguery. What did I now but one day made a false alarum in the quarter where they lay, to try how they would stand to their tackling, and with a pitiful outcry warned them to fly, for there was treason afoot, they were environed and beset. Upon the first watchword of treason that was given, I think they betook them to their heels very stoutly; left their pen and inkhorns and paper behind them for spoil, resigned their desks, with the money that was in them, to the mercy of the vanquisher, and in fine, left me and my fellows (their foolcatchers) lords of the field; how we dealt with them, their disburdened desks can best tell, but this I am assured, we fared the better for it a fortnight of fasting-days after. I must not place a volume in the precincts of a pamphlet; sleep an hour or two, and dream that Tournay and Terouanne is won, that the King is shipped again into England, and that I am close at hard-meat at Windsor or at Hampton Court. What, will you in your indifferent opinions allow me for my travel no more signory over the pages than I had before? Yes, whether you will part with so much probable friendly suppose or no, Ill have it in spite of your hearts. For your instruction and godly consolation, be informed that at that time I was no common squire, no undertrodden torch-bearer; I had my feather in my cap as big as a flag in the foretop; my French doublet, gelt in the belly as though (like a pig ready to be spitted) all my guts had been plucked out; a pair of side paned hose that hung down like two scales filled with Holland cheeses; my long stock that sat close to my dock, and smothered not a scab or a lecherous hairy sinew on the calf of the leg; my rapier pendant like a round stick fastened in the tacklings for skippers the better to climb by; my cape-cloak of black cloth, overspreading my back like a thornback, or an elephants ear, that hangs on his shoulders like a country housewifes barm-skin which she thirls her spindle on; &, in consummation of my curiosity, my hands without gloves, all a more French, and a black budge edging of a beard on the upper lip, & the like sable auglet of excrements in the rising of the ankle [sic?] of my chin. I was the first that brought in the order of passing into the court which I derived from the common word Qui passa, and the heralds phrase of arms passant, thinking in sincerity he was not a gentleman, nor his arms current, who was not first passed by the pages. If any prentice or other came into the court that was not a gentleman, I thought it was an indignity to the pre-eminence of the court to include such a one, and could not be salved(?) except we gave him arms passant, to make him a gentleman. Besides, in Spain none pass any far way but he must be examined what he is, and give threepence for his pass. In which regard it was considered of by the common table of the cup-bearers what a perilsome thing it was to let any stranger or outdweller approach so near the precincts of
the prince as the great chamber without examining what he was, and giving him his pass, whereupon we established the like order, but took no money of them as they did; only for a sign that he had not passed our hands unexamined, we set a red mark on their ears, and so let them walk as authentical. I must not discover what ungodly dealing we had with the black-jacks, or how oft I was crowned king of the drunkards with a court cup; let me quietly descend to the waning of my youthful days, and tell a little of the sweating-sickness, that made me in a cold sweat take my heels and run out of England. This sweating-sickness was a disease that a man then might catch, and never go to a hothouse. Many masters desire to have such servants as would work till they sweat again, but in those days he that sweat never wrought again. That scripture then was not thought so necessary which says, Earn thy living with the sweat of thy brows, for then they earned their dying with the sweat of their brows. It was enough if a fat man did but truss his points, to turn him over the perch; Mother Cornelius tub, why it was like hell; he that came into it never came out of it. Cooks that stand continually basting their faces before the fire were now all cashiered with this sweat into kitchen-stuff; their hall fell into the Kings hands for want of one of the trade to uphold it. Felt-makers and furriers, what the one with the hot steam of their wool new taken out of the pan, and the other with the contagious heat of their slaughter-budge and cony-skins, died more thick than of the pestilence; I have seen an old woman at that season, having three chins, wipe them all away one after another as they melted to water, and left herself nothing of a mouth but an upper chap. Look how in May or the heat of summer we lay butter in water for fear it should melt away, so then were men fain to wet their clothes in water as dyers do, and hide themselves in wells from the heat of the sun. Then happy was he that was an ass, for nothing will kill an ass but cold, and none died but with extreme heat. The fishes called sea-stars, that burn one another by excessive heat, were not so contagious as one man that had the sweat was to another. Masons paid nothing for hair to mix their lime, nor glovers to stuff their balls with, for then they had it for nothing; it dropped off mens heads and beards faster than any barber could shave it. O, if hair breeches had then been in fashion, what a fine world had it been for tailors, and so it was a fine world for tailors nevertheless, for he that could make a garment slightest and thinnest carried it away. Cutters, I can tell you, then stood upon it to have their trade one of the twelve companies, for who was it then that would not have his doublet cut to the skin, and his shirt cut into it, too, to make it more cold. It was as much as a mans life was worth, once to name a frieze jerkin; in was high treason for a fat gross man to come within five miles of the court. I hear where they died up all in one family, and not a mothers child escaped, insomuch as they had but an Irish rug locked up in a press, and not laid upon any bed neither. If those that were sick of this malady slept of it, they never waked more. Physicians with their simples in this case waxed simple fellows, and knew not which way to bestir them.
Galen might go shoe the gander for any good he could do; his secretaries had so long called him divine that now he had lost all his virtue upon earth. Hippocrates might well help almanac-makers, but here he had not a word to say; a man might sooner catch the sweat with plodding over him to no end than cure the sweat with any of his impotent principles. Paracelsus, with his spirit of the buttery, and his spirits of minerals, could not so much as say, God amend him, to the matter. Plus erat in artifice quam arte, There was more infection in the physician himself than his art could cure. This mortality first began amongst old men, for they, taking a pride to have their breasts loose basted with tedious beards, kept their houses so hot with their hairy excrements that not so much but their very walls sweat out saltpetre with the smothering perplexity; nay, a number of them had marvelous hot breaths, which sticking in the briers of their bushy beards, could not choose but (as close air long imprisoned) engender corruption. Wiser was our brother Banks of these latter days, who made his juggling horse a cut, for fear if at any time he should foist, the stink sticking in his thick bushy tail might be noisome to his auditors. Should I tell you how many pursuivants with red noses, and sergeants with precious faces, shrunk away in this sweat, you would not believe me. Even as the salamander with his very sight blasteth apples on the trees, so a pursuivant or a sergeant at this present, with the very reflex of his fieri facias, was able to spoil a man afar off. In some places of the world there is no shadow of the sun; diebus illis, if it had been so in England, the generation of Brute had died all and some. To knit up this description in a purse-net, so fervent & scorching was the burning air which enclosed them that the most blessed man then alive would have thought that God had done fairly by him if he had turned him to a goat, for goats take breath not at the mouth or nose only, but at the ears also. Take breath how they would, I vowed to tarry no longer among them. As at Terouanne I was a demi-soldier in jest, so now I became a martialist in earnest. Over sea with my implements I got me, where hearing the King of France and the Switzers were together by the ears, I made towards them as fast as I could, thinking to thrust myself into that faction that was strongest. It was my good luck or my ill (I know not which) to come just to the fighting of the battle, where I saw a wonderful spectacle of bloodshed on both sides; here unwieldy Switzers wallowing in their gore like an ox in his dung, there the sprightly French sprawling and turning on the stained grass like a roach new taken out of the stream; all the ground was strewed as thick with battle-axes as the carpenters yard with chips; the plain appeared like a quagmire, overspread as it was with trampled dead bodies. In one place might you behold a heap of dead murdered men overwhelmed with a falling steed instead of a tombstone, in another place a bundle of bodies fettered together in their own bowels, and as the tyrant Roman emperors used to tie condemned living caitiffs face to face to dead corses, so were the half living here mixed with squeezed carcasses long putrified. Any man might give arms that was an actor in that battle, for there were more arms and legs scattered in the field that day than will be gathered up till doomsday. The French King himself in this conflict was much distressed, the brains of his own men sprinkled in his face; thrice was his courser slain under him, and thrice was he struck on the breast with a spear, but in the end, by the help of the
Venetians, the Helvetians or Switzers were subdued, and he crowned a victor, the peace concluded, and the city of Milan surrendered unto him as a pledge of reconciliation. That war thus blown over, and the several bands dissolved, like a crow that still follows aloof where there is carrion, I flew me over to Munster in Germany, which an Anabaptistical brother named John Leyden kept at that instant against the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony. Here I was in good hope to set up my staff for some reasonable time, deeming that no city would drive it to a siege except they were able to hold out, and prettily well had these Munsterians held out, for they kept the Emperor and the Duke of Saxony play for the space of a year, and longer would have done but that Dame Famine came amongst them, whereupon they were forced by messengers to agree upon a day of fight when, according to their Anabaptistical error they might all be new christened in their own blood. That day come, flourishing entered John Leyden, the botcher, into the field, with a scarf made of lists like a bow-case, a cross on his breast like a thread bottom, a round twilted tailors cushion buckled like a tankard-bearers device on his shoulders for a target, the pike whereof was a pack-needle, a tough prentices club for his spear, a great brewers cowl(?) on his back for a corslet, and on his head, for a helmet, a huge high shoe with the bottom turned upwards, embossed as full of hobnails as ever it might stick. His men were all base handicrafts, as cobblers and curriers and tinkers, whereof some had bars of iron, some hatchets, some cowl-staves, some dung-forks, some spades, some mattocks, some wood-knives, some adzes for their weapons; he that was best provided had but a piece of rusty brown-bill bravely fringed with cobwebs to fight for him. Perchance here and there you might see a fellow that had a canker-eaten skull on his head which served him and his ancestors for a chamber-pot two hundred years, and another that had bent a couple of iron dripping-pans armour-wise to fence his back and his belly, another that had thrust a pair of dry old boots as a breast-plate before his belly of his doublet because he would not be dangerously hurt, another that had twilted all his truss full of counters, thinking if the enemy should take him, he would mistake them for gold, and so save his life for his money. Very devout asses they were, for all they were so dunstically set forth, and such as thought they knew as much of Gods mind as richer men; why, inspiration was their ordinary familiar, and buzzed in their ears like a bee in a box every hour what news from heaven, hell, and the land of whipperginnie; displease them who durst, he should have his mittimus to damnation extempore; they would vaunt there was not a peas difference betwixt them and the apostles: they were as poor as they, of as base trades as they, and no more inspired than they, and with God there is no respect of persons, only herein may seem some little diversity to lurk, that Peter wore a sword, and they count it flat hell-fire for any man to wear a dagger; nay, so grounded and gravelled were they in this opinion, that now when they should come to battle, theres never a one of them would bring a blade (no, not an onion blade) about him, to die for it. It was not lawful, said they, for any man to draw the sword but the magistrate, and in fidelity (which I had well-nigh forgot), Jack Leyden, their magistrate, had the image or likeness of a piece of a rusty sword, like a lusty lad, by his side; now I remember me, it was but a foil neither, and he wore it to show that he should have the foil of his enemies, which might have been an oracle for his two-hand interpretation. Quid plura? His battle is pitched;
by pitched I do not mean set in order, for that was far from their order, only as sailors do, pitch their apparel to make it storm-proof, so had most of them pitched their patched clothes to make them impierceable, a nearer way than to be at the charges of armour by half. And in another sort he might be said to have pitched the field, for he had pitched, or rather set up, his rest whether to fly if they were discomfited. Peace, peace, there in the belfry; service begins. Upon their knees before they join falls John Leyden and his fraternity very devoutly; they pray, they howl, they expostulate with God to grant them victory, and use such unspeakable vehemence a man would think them the only well-bent men under heaven. Wherein let me dilate a little more gravely than the nature of this history requires, or will be expected of so young a practitioner in divinity, that not those that intermissively cry, Lord open unto us, Lord upon unto us, enter first into the kingdom, that not the greatest professors have the greatest portion in grace, that all is not gold that glisters. When Christ said the kingdom of heaven must suffer violence, He meant not the violence of long babbling prayers, nor the violence of tedious invective sermons without wit, but the violence of faith, the violence of good works, the violence of patient suffering. The ignorant snatch the kingdom of heaven to themselves with greediness, when we with all our learning sink into hell. Where did Peter and John, in the third of the Acts, find the lame cripple but in the gate of the temple called beautiful? In the beautifullest gates of our temple, in the forefront of professors, are many lame cripples, lame in life, lame in good works, lame in everything, yet will they always sit at the gates of the temples; none be more forward than they to enter into matters of reformation, yet none more behindhand to enter into the true temple of the Lord by the gates of good life. You may object that those which I speak against are more diligent in reading the scriptures, more careful to resort unto sermons, more sober in their looks, more modest in their attire, than any else. But I pray you, let me answer you, doth not Christ say that before the latter day the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood? Whereof what may the meaning be, but that the glorious sun of the gospel shall be eclipsed with the dim cloud of dissimulation, that that which is the brightest planet of salvation shall be a means of error and darkness, and the moon shall be turned into blood, those that shine fairest, make the simplest show, seem most to favour religion, shall rent out the bowels of the church, be turned into blood, and all this shall come to pass before the notable day of the Lord whereof this age is the eve? Let me use a more familiar example, since the heat of a great number outraged so excessively. Did not the devil lead Christ to the pinnacle or highest place of the temple to tempt him? If he led Christ, he will lead a whole army of hypocrites to the top or highest part of the temple, the highest step of religion and holiness, to seduce them and subvert them. I say unto you that which this, our tempted Saviour, with many other words, besought his disciples, Save yourselves from this forward generation; verily, verily, the servant is not greater than his master, Verily, verily, sinful men are not holier than holy Jesus, their maker. That holy Jesus again repeats this holy sentence, Remember the words I said unto you: the servant is not holier nor greater than his master, as if he
should say, Remember then, imprint in your memory; your pride and singularity will make you forget them; the effects of them many years hence will come to pass. Whosoever will seek to save his soul shall lose it; whosoever seeks by headlong means to enter into heaven, and disannul Gods ordinance, shall, with the giants that thought to scale heaven in contempt of Jupiter, be overwhelmed with Mount Ossa and Pelion, and dwell with the devil in eternal desolation. Though the high priests office was expired when Paul said unto one of them, God rebuke thee, thou painted supulchre, yet when a stander-by reproved him, saying, Revilest thou the high priest?, he repented and asked forgiveness. That which I suppose, I do not grant; the lawfulness of the authority they opposed themselves against is sufficiently proved; far be it my under-age arguments should intrude themselves as a green weak prop to support so high a building. Let it suffice, if you know Christ, you know his Father also; if you know Christianity, you know the Fathers of the Church also. But a great number of you, with Philip, have been long with Christ, and have not known him, have long professed yourselves Christians, and have not known his true ministers; you follow the French and Scottish fashion and faction, and in all points are like the Switzers, Qui quaerunt cum qua gente cadunt, that seek with what nation they may first miscarry. In the days of Nero there was an odd fellow that had found out an exquisite way to make glass as hammer-proof as gold; shall I say that the like experiment he made upon glass we have practised on the gospel? Aye, confidently will I: we have found out a sleight to hammer it to any heresy whatsoever. But those furnaces of falsehood and hammer-heads of heresy must be dissolved and broken as his was, or else I fear me the false glittering glass of innovation will be better esteemed of than the ancient gold of the gospel. The fault of faults is this, that your dead-born faith is begotten by too too infant fathers. Cato, one of the wisest men in Roman histories canonized, was not born till his father was fourscore years old; none can be a perfect father of faith, and beget men aright unto God, but those that are aged in experience, have many years imprinted in their mild conversation, and have, with Zacheus, sold all their possessions of vanities to enjoy the sweet fellowship, not of the human, but spiritual Messias. Ministers and pastors, sell away your sects and schisms to the decrepit churches in contention beyond sea; they have been so long inured to war, both about matters of religion and regiment, that now they have no peace of mind but in troubling all other mens peace. Because the poverty of their provinces will allow them no proportionable maintenance for higher callings of ecclesiastical magistrates, they would reduce us to the precedent of their rebellious persecuted beggary, much like the sect of philosophers called Cynics, who, when they saw they were born to no lands or possessions, nor had any possible means to support their estates, but they must live despised and in misery, do what they could, they plotted and consulted with themselves how to make their poverty better esteemed of than rich dominion and sovereignty. The upshot of their plotting and consultation was this, that they would live to themselves, scorning the very breath or
company of all men; they professed (according to the rate of their lands) voluntary poverty, thin fare, & lying hard, contemning and inveighing against all those as brute beasts whatsoever whom the world had given any reputation for riches or prosperity. Diogenes was one of the first and foremost of the ringleaders of this rusty morosity, and he, for all his nice dogged disposition and blunt deriding of worldly dross and the gross felicity of fools, was taken notwithstanding a little after very fairly a-coining money in his cell; so fares it up and down with our cynical reformed foreign churches: they will digest no grapes of great bishoprics, forsooth, because they cannot tell how to come by them; they must shape their coats, good men, according to their cloth, and do as they may, not as they would, yet they must give us leave here in England that are their honest neighbours, if we have more cloth than they, to make our garment somewhat larger. What was the foundation or groundwork of this dismal declining of Munster but the banishing of their bishop, their confiscating and casting lots for church livings, as the soldiers cast lots for Christs garments, and, in short terms, their making the house of God a den of thieves? The house of God a number of hungry church-robbers in these days have made a den of thieves. Thieves spend loosely what they have gotten lightly; sacrilege is no sure inheritance; Dionysius was neer the richer for robbing of Jupiter of his golden coat; he was driven in the end to play the schoolmaster at Corinth. The name of religion, be it good or bad that is ruinated, God never suffers unrevenged; Ill say of it as Ovid said of eunuchs: Qui primus pueris genitalia membra recidit, Vulnera quae fecit debuit ipse pati. Who first deprived young boys of their best part, With selfsame wounds he gave he ought to smart. So would he that first gelt religion of church livings had been first gelt himself, or never lived; Cardinal Wolsey is the man I aim at, Qui in suas poenas ingeniosus erat, first gave others a light to his own overthrow. How it prospered with him and his instruments that after wrought for themselves, chronicles largely report, though not apply, and some parcel of their punishment yet unpaid I do not doubt but will be required of their posterity. To go forward with my story of the overthrow of that usurper, John Leyden: he and all his army, as I said before, falling prostrate on their faces and fervently given over to prayer, determined never to cease or leave soliciting of God till he had showed them from heaven some manifest miracle of success. Note that it was a general received tradition both with John Leyden and all the crew of Knipperdollinks and Muncers, if God at any time at their vehement outcries and clamours did not condescend to their requests, to rail on him and curse him to his face, to dispute with him and argue him of injustice for not being so good as his word with them, and to urge his many promises in the scripture against him, so that they did not serve God simply, but that he should serve their turns, and after that tenure are many content to
serve as bondmen to save the danger of hanging, but he that serves God aright, whose upright conscience hath for his mot, Amor est mihi cause sequendi, I serve because I love, he says, Ego te potius, Domine, quam tua dona sequar, Ill rather follow thee, O Lord, for thine own sake, than for any covetous respect of that thou canst do for me. Christ would have no followers but such as forsook all and follow him, such as forsake all their own desires, such as abandon all expectations of reward in this world, such as neglected and contemned their lives, their wives and children, in comparison of him, and were content to take up their cross and follow him. These Anabaptists had not yet forsook all and followed Christ, they had not forsook their own desires of revenge and innovation, they had not abandoned their expectation of the spoil of their enemies, they regarded their lives, they looked after their wives and children, they took not up their crosses of humility and followed him, but would cross him, upbraid him, and set him at naught if he assured not by some sign their prayers and supplications. Deteriora sequuntur, they followed God as daring him; God heard their prayers, Quod petitur poena est, it was their speedy punishment that they prayed for. Lo, according to the sum of their impudent supplications, a sign in the heavens appeared, the glorious sign of the rainbow, which agreed just with the sign of their ensign, that was a rainbow likewise. Whereupon, assuring themselves of victory (Miseri quod volunt, facile credunt, That which wretches would have, they easily believe), with shouts and clamours they presently ran headlong on their well deserved confusion. Pitiful and lamentable was their unpitied and well performed slaughter. To see even a bear (which is the most cruelest of all beasts) too too bloodily overmatched, and deformedly rent in pieces by an unconscionable number of curs, it would move compassion against kind, and make those that (beholding him at the stake yet uncoped with) wish him a suitable death to his ugly shape, now to recall their hard-hearted wishes, and moan him suffering as a mild beast in comparison of the foul-mouthed mastiffs, his butchers; even such compassion did those overmatched ungracious Munsterians obtain of many indifferent eyes, who now thought them (suffering) to be sheep brought innocent to the shambles, whenas before they deemed them as a number of wolves up in arms against the shepherds. The imperials themselves that were their executioners (like a father that weeps when he beats his child, yet still weeps and still beats) not without much ruth and sorrow prosecuted that lamentable massacre, yet drums and trumpets sounding nothing but stern revenge in their ears made them so eager that their hands had no leisure to ask counsel of their effeminate eyes; their swords, their pikes, their bills, their bows, their calivers slew, empierced, knocked down, shot through and overthrew as many men every minute of the battle as there falls ears of corn before the scythe at one blow, yet all their weapons so slaying, empiercing, knocking down, shooting through, overthrowing, dissoul-joined not half so many as the hailing thunder of the great ordinance; so ordinary at every footstep
was the imbruement of iron in blood that one could hardly discern heads from bullets, or clottered hair from mangled flesh hung with gore. This tale must at one time or other give up the ghost, and as good now as stay longer; I would gladly rid my hands of it cleanly if I could tell how, for what with talking of cobblers, tinkers, rope-makers, botchers, and dirt-daubers, the mark is clean out of my muses mouth, & I am as it were more than duncified twixt divinity and poetry. What is there more as touching this tragedy that you would be resolved of? Nay, quickly, for now is my pen on foot again. How John Leyden died, is that it? He died like dog; he was hanged & the halter paid for. For his companions, do they trouble you? I can tell you they troubled some men before, for they were all killed, & none escaped, no, not so much as one to tell the tale of the rainbow. Hear what it is to be Anabaptists, to be Puritans, to be villains; you may be counted illuminate botchers for awhile, but your end will be, Good people, pray for us. With the tragical catastrophe of this Munsterian conflict did I cashier the new vocation of my cavaliership. There was no more honourable wars in Christendom towards, wherefore, after I had learned to be half an hour in bidding a man bonjour in German synonyms, I travelled along the country towards England as fast as I could. What with wagons and bare ten toes having attained to Middelburg (good Lord, see the changing chances of us knights-errant infants), I met with the right honourable Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, my late master. Jesu, I was persuaded I should not be more glad to see heaven than I was to see him. O, it was a right noble lord, liberality itself (if in this iron age there were any such creature as liberality left on the earth), a prince in content because a poet without peer. Destiny never defames herself but when she lets an excellent poet die; if there be any spark of Adams paradised perfection yet embered up in the breasts of mortal men, certainly God hath bestowed that, his perfectest image, on poets. None come so near to God in wit, none more contemn the world; Vatis auarus non temere est animus, saith Horace, versus amat, hoc studet unum, Seldom have you seen any poet possessed with avarice, only verses he loves, nothing else he delights in, and as they contemn the world, so contrarily of the mechanical world are none more contemned. Despised they are of the world, because they are not of the world; their thoughts are exalted above the world of ignorance and all earthly conceits. As sweet angelical choristers, they are continually conversant in the heaven of arts; heaven itself is but the highest height of knowledge; he that knows himself, & all things else, knows the means to be happy; happy, thrice happy, are they whom God hath doubled his spirit upon, and given a double soul unto to be poets. My heroical master exceeded in this supernatural kind of wit; he entertained no gross earthly spirit of avarice, nor weak womanly spirit of pusillanimity and fear that are feigned to be of the water, but admirable, airy and fiery spirits, full of freedom, magnaminity and bountihood. Let me not speak any more of his accomplishments, for
fear I spend all my spirits in praising him, and leave myself no vigour or wit or effects of a soul to go forward with my history. Having thus met him I so much adored, no interpleading was there of opposite occasions, but back I must return and bear half stakes with him in the lottery of travel. I was not altogether unwilling to walk along with such a good purse-bearer, yet musing what changeable humour had so suddenly seduced him from his native soil to seek out needless perils in those parts beyond sea, one night very boldly I demanded of him the reason that moved him thereto. Ah, quoth he, my little page, full little canst thou perceive how far metamorphosed I am from myself, since I last saw thee. There is a little god called love that will not be worshipped of any leaden brains, one that proclaims himself sole king and emperor of piercing eyes and chief sovereign of soft hearts; he it is that, exercising his empire in my eyes, hath exorcised and clean conjured me from my content. Thou knowest stately Geraldine, too stately I fear for me to do homage to her statue or shrine; she it is that is come out of Italy to bewitch all the wise men of England; upon Queen Katherine dowager she waits, that hath a dowry of beauty sufficient to make her wooed of the greatest kings in Christendom. Her high-exalted sunbeams have set the phoenix nest of my breast on fire, and I myself have brought Arabian spiceries of sweet passions and praises to furnish out the funeral flame of my folly. Those who were condemned to be smothered to death by sinking down into the soft bottom of an highbuilt bed of roses, never died so sweet a death as I should die if her rose-coloured disdain were my deathsman. Oh, thrice imperial Hampton Court, Cupids enchanted castle, the place where I first saw the perfect omnipotence of the Almighty expressed in mortality, tis thou alone that, tithing all other men solace in thy pleasant situation, affordest me nothing but an excellent-begotten sorrow out of the chief treasury of all thy recreations. Dear Wilton, understand that there it was where I first set eye on my more than celestial Geraldine. Seeing her, I admired her; all the whole receptacle of my sight was unhabited [sic?] with her rare worth. Long suit and uncessant protestations got me the grace to be entertained. Did never unloving servant so prentice-like obey his never-pleased mistress as I did her. My life, my wealth, my friends had all their destiny depending on her command. Upon a time I was determined to travel; the fame of Italy, and an especial affection I had unto poetry, my second mistress, for which Italy was so famous, had wholly ravished me unto it. There was no dehortment from it, but needs thither I would, wherefore, coming to my mistress as she was then walking with other ladies of estate in Paradise at Hampton Court, I most humbly besought her of favour that she would give me so much gracious leave to absent myself from her service as to travel a year or two into Italy. She very discreetly answered me that if my love were so hot as I had often avouched, I did very well to apply the plaster of absence unto it, for absence, as they say, causeth
forgetfulness, yet nevertheless since it is Italy, my native country, you are so desirous to see, I am the more willing to make my will yours. Aye(?), pete Italiam, go and seek Italy with Aeneas, but be more true than Aeneas; I hope that kind wit-cherishing climate will work no change in so witty a breast. No country of mine shall it be more, if it conspire with thee in any new love against me. One charge I will give thee, and let it be rather a request than charge: when thou comest to Florence (the fair city from whence I fetched the pride of my birth), by an open challenge defend my beauty against all comers. Thou hast that honourable carriage in arms that it shall be no discredit for me to bequeath all the glory of my beauty to thy well-governed arm. Fain would I be known where I was born, fain would I have thee known where fame sits in her chiefest theatre. Farewell, forget me not; continued deserts will eternize me unto thee, thy wishes shall be expired when thy travel shall be once ended. Here did tears step out before words, and intercepted the course of my kind-conceived speech, even as wind is allayed with rain; with heart-scalding sighs I confirmed her parting request, and vowed myself hers while living heat allowed me to be mine own; Hinc illae lachrimae, here-hence proceedeth the whole cause of my peregrination. Not a little was I delighted with this unexpected love-story, especially from a mouth out of which was naught wont to march but stern precepts of gravity & modesty. I swear unto you, I thought his company the better by a thousand crowns because he had discarded those nice terms of chastity and continency. Now I beseech God love me so well as I love a plain-dealing man; earth is earth, flesh is flesh, earth will to earth, and flesh unto flesh; frail earth, frail flesh, who can keep you from the work of your creation? Dismissing this fruitless annotation pro et contra, towards Venice we progressed, and took Rotterdam in our way, that was clean out of our way; there we met with aged learnings chief ornament, that abundant and super-ingenious clerk, Erasmus, as also with merry Sir Thomas More, our countryman, who was come purposely over a little before us to visit the said grave father Erasmus; what talk, what conference we had then it were here superfluous to rehearse, but this I can assure you, Erasmus in all his speeches seemed so much to mislike the indiscretion of princes in preferring of parasites and fools that he decreed with himself to swim with the stream, and write a book forthwith in commendation of folly. Quick-witted Sir Thomas More travelled in a clean contrary province, for he seeing most commonwealths corrupted by ill custom, & that principalities were nothing but great piracies, which, gotten by violence and murder were maintained by private undermining and bloodshed, that in the chiefest flourishing kingdoms there was no equal or well-divided weal one with another, but a manifest conspiracy of rich men against poor men, procuring their own unlawful commodities under the name and interest of the commonwealth, he concluded with himself to lay down a perfect plot of a commonwealth or government, which he would entitle his Utopia. So left we them to prosecute their discontented studies, and made our next journey to Wittenberg.
At the very point of our entrance into Wittenberg, we were spectators of a very solemn scholastical entertainment of the Duke of Saxony thither. Whom, because he was the chief patron of their university, and had took Luthers part in banishing the Mass and all like papal jurisdiction out of their town, they crouched to extremely. The chief ceremonies of their entertainment were these: first, the heads of their university (they were great heads, of certainty) met him in their hooded hypocrisy and doctorly acccoutrements, secundum formam statuti; where by the orator of the university, whose picke-devant was very plentifully besprinkled with rose-water, a very learned or rather ruthful oration was delivered (for it rained all the while) signifying thus much, that it was all by patch & by piecemeal stolen out of Tully, and he must pardon them, though in emptying their phrase-books the world emptied his entrails, for they did it not in any ostentation of wit (which God knows they had not) but to show the extraordinary goodwill they bare the Duke (to have him stand in the rain till he was through wet); a thousand quemadmodums and quapropters he came over him with; every sentence he concluded with Esse posse videatur; through all the nine worthies he ran with praising and comparing him; Nestors years he assured him of under the broad seal of their supplications, and with that crow-trodden verse in Virgil, Dum iuga montis aper, he packed up his pipes and cried dixi. That pageant overpassed, there rushed upon him a miserable rabblement of junior graduates that all cried upon him mightily in their gibberish like a company of beggars, God save your Grace, God save your Grace, Jesus preserve your Highness, though it be but for an hour. Some three-halfpenny worth of Latin there also had he thrown at his face, but it was choice stuff, I can tell you, as there is a choice even amongst rags gathered up from the dunghill. At the towns end met him the burghers and dunstical incorporationers of Wittenberg in their distinguished liveries, their distinguished livery faces, I mean, for they were most of them hot-livered drunkards, and had all the coat colours of sanguine, purple, crimson, copper, carnation that were to be had in their countenances. Filthy knaves, no cost had they bestowed on the town for his welcome, saving new painted their hofs(?) and bousing-houses, which commonly are fairer than their churches, and over their gates set the town arms carousing a whole health to the Dukes arms, which sounded gulping after this sort, Vanhotten, slotten, irk bloshen glotten gelderslike: whatever the words were, the sense was this: Good drink is a medicine for all diseases. A bursten-belly ink-horn orator called Vanderhulke they picked out to present him with an oration, one that had a sulphurous big-swollen large face like a Saracen, eyes like two Kentish oysters, a mouth that opened as wide every time he spake as one of those old knit trap doors, a beard as though it had been made of a birds nest plucked in pieces, which consisteth of straw, hair and dirt mixed together. He was apparelled in black leather new liquored, & a short gown without any gathering in the back, faced before and behind with a boisterous bearskin, and a red night-cap on his head. To this purport and effect was this broking double beer oration.
Right noble Duke (ideo nobilis quasi no bilis, for you have no bile or choler in you), know that our present incorporation of Wittenberg, by me the tongueman of their thankfulness, a townsman by birth, a free German by nature, an orator by art, and a scrivener by education, in all obedience & chastity, most bountifully bid you welcome to Wittenberg. Welcome, said I? O orificial rhetoric, wipe thy everlasting mouth, and afford me a more Indian metaphor than that for the brave princely blood of a Saxon. Oratory, uncask the bard hutch of thy compliments, and with the triumphantest trope in thy treasury do trewage unto him. What impotent speech with his eight parts may not specify, this unestimable gift, holding his peace, shall as it were (with tears I speak it) do, whereby as it may seem or appear to manifest or declare, and yet it is, and yet it is not, and yet it may be a diminutive oblation meritorious to your high pusillanimity and indignity. Why should I go gadding and fizgigging after firking flantado amphibologies? Wit is wit, and goodwill is goodwill. With all the wit I have, I here, according to the premises, offer up unto you the citys general goodwill, which is a gilded can, in manner and form following, for you and the heirs of your body lawfully begotten to drink healths in. The scholastical squitter-books clout you up canopies and foot-cloths of verses. We that are good-fellows, and live as merry as cup and can, will not verse upon you as they do, but must do as we can, and entertain you if it be but with a plain empty can. He hath learning enough that hath learned to drink to his first man. Gentle Duke, without paradox be it spoken, thy horses at our own proper costs and charges shall knead up to the knees all the while thou art here in spruce beer and Lubeck liquor. Not a dog thou bringest with thee but shall be banqueted with Rhenish wine and sturgeon. On our shoulders we wear no lambskin or miniver like these academics, yet we can drink to the confusion of thy enemies. Good lambs-wool have we for their lambskins and for their miniver, large minerals in our coffers. Mechanical men they call us, and not amiss, for most of us, being Maechi, that is, cuckolds and whoremasters, fetch our antiquity from the temple of Mecca, where Mahomet was hung up. Three parts of the world, America, Afric and Asia, are of this, our mechanic religion. Nero, when he cried, O quantus artifex pereo, professed himself of our freedom, insomuch as artifex is a citizen or craftsman, as well as carnifex a scholar or hangman. Pass on by leave into the precincts of our abomination. Bonny Duke, frolic in our bower, and persuade thyself that even as garlic hath three properties, to make a man wink, drink and stink, so we will wink on thy imperfections, drink to thy favourites, and all thy foes shall stink before us. So be it. Farewell. The Duke laughed not a little at this ridiculous oration, but that very night as great an ironical occasion was ministered, for he was bidden to one of the chief schools to a comedy handled by scholars. Acolastus, the prodigal child, was the name of it, which was so filthily acted, so leathernly set forth, as would have moved laughter in Heraclitus. One, as if he had been planing a clay floor, stampingly trod the stage so hard with his feet that I thought verily he had resolved to do the carpenter that set it up some utter shame. Another flung his arms like cudgels at a pear-tree, insomuch as it was mightily dreaded that he would strike the candles that hung above their heads out of their sockets, and leave them all dark. Another did nothing but wink and make faces. There was a parasite, and he with clapping his hands and thripping his fingers seemed to dance an antic to and
fro. The only thing they did well was the prodigal childs hunger, most of their scholars being hungerly kept, & surely you would have said they had been brought up in hogs academy to learn to eat acorns if you had seen how sedulously they fell to them. Not a jest had they to keep their auditors from sleeping but of swill and draff; yea, now and then the servant put his hand into the dish before his master, & almost choked himself, eating slovenly and ravenously to cause sport. The next day they had solemn disputations, where Luther and Carolostadius scolded level-coil. A mass of words I wot well they heaped up against the Mass and the Pope, but farther particulars of their disputations I remember not. I thought verily they would have worried one another with words, they were so earnest and vehement. Luther had the louder voice; Carolostadius went beyond him in beating and bouncing with his fists. Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos; they uttered nothing to make a man laugh, therefore I will leave them. Marry, their outward gestures would now and then afford a man a morsel of mirth; of those two I mean not so much as of all the other train of opponents & respondents. One pecked with his forefinger at every half-syllable he brought forth, and nodded with his nose like an old singing man teaching a young chorister to keep time. Another would be sure to wipe his mouth with his handkerchief at the end of every full point, and ever when he thought he had cast a figure so curiously as he dived over head and ears into his auditors admiration, he would take occasion to stroke up his hair, and twine up his mustachios twice or thrice over, while they might have leisure to applaud him. A third wavered & waggled his head like a proud horse playing with his bridle, or as I have seen some fantastical swimmer at every stroke train his chin sidelong over his left shoulder. A fourth sweat and foamed at the mouth for very anger his adversary had denied that part of the syllogism which he was not prepared to answer. A fifth spread his arms like an usher that goes before to make room, and thripped with his finger and his thumb when he thought he had tickled it with a conclusion. A sixth hung down his countenance like a sheep, and stutted and slavered very pitifully when his invention was stepped aside out of the way. A seventh gasped for wind, & groaned in his pronunciation as if he were hard bound with some bad argument. Gross plodders they were all, that had some learning and reading, but no wit to make use of it. They imagined the Duke took the greatest pleasure and contentment under heaven to hear them speak Latin, and as long as they talked nothing but Tully, he was bound to attend them. A most vain thing it is in many universities at this day, that they count him excellent eloquent who stealeth not whole phrases but whole pages out of Tully. If of a number of shreds of his sentences he can shape an oration, from all the world he carries it away, although in truth it be no more than a fools coat of many colours. No invention or matter have they of their own, but tack up a style of his stale gallimaufries. The leaden-headed Germans first began this, and we Englishmen have surfeited of their absurd imitation. I pity Nizolius, that had nothing to do but pick thread-ends out of an old overworn garment. This is but by the way; we must look back to our disputants. One amongst the rest, thinking to be more conceited than his fellows, seeing the Duke have a dog he loved well, which sat by him on the terrace, converted all his oration to him, and not a hair of his tail but he kembed out with comparisons; so to have courted him if he were a bitch had been very suspicious. Another commented and descanted on the Dukes staff, new tipping it
with many quaint epithets. Some cast his nativity, and promised him he should not die until the day of judgement. Omitting further superfluities of this stamp, in this general assembly we found intermixed that abundant scholar Cornelius Agrippa. At that time he bare the fame to be the greatest conjurer in Christendom. Scoto, that did the juggling tricks before the Queen, never came near him one quarter in magic reputation. The doctors of Wittenberg, doting on the rumour that went of him, desired him before the Duke and them to do something extraordinary memorable. One requested to see pleasant Plautus, and that he would show them in what habit he went, and with what countenance he looked when he ground corn in the mill. Another had half a months mind to Ovid and his hook-nose. Erasmus, who was not wanting in that honourable meeting, requested to see Tully in that same grace and majesty he pleaded his oration pro Roscio Amerino, affirming that till in person he beheld his importunity of pleading, he would in no wise be persuaded that any man could carry away a manifest case with rhetoric so strangely. To Erasmus petition he easily condescended, & willing the doctors at such an hour to hold their convocation, and every one to keep him in his place without moving, at the time prefixed in entered Tully, ascended his pleading-place, and declaimed verbatim the forenamed oration, but with such astonishing amazement, with such fervent exaltation of spirit, with such soul-stirring gestures, that all his auditors were ready to install his guilty client for a god. Great was the concourse of glory Agrippa drew to him with this one feat. And indeed he was so cloyed with men which came to behold him that he was fain, sooner than he would, to return to the Emperors court from whence he came, and leave Wittenberg before he would. With him we travelled along, having purchased his acquaintance a little before. By the way as we went, my master and I agreed to change names. It was concluded betwixt us that I should be the Earl of Surrey, and he my man, only because in his own person, which he would not have reproached, he meant to take more liberty of behaviour; as for my carriage, he knew he was to tune it at a key, either high or low, as he list. To the Emperors court we came, where our entertainment was every way plentiful; carouses we had in whole gallons instead of quart-pots. Not a health was given us but contained well near a hogshead. The customs of the country we were eager to be instructed in, but nothing we could learn but this, that ever at the Emperors coronation there is an ox roasted with a stag in the belly, and that stag in his belly hath a kid, and that kid is stuffed full of birds. Some courtiers, to weary out time, would tell us further tales of Cornelius Agrippa, and how when Sir Thomas More, our countryman, was there, he showed him the whole destruction of Troy in a dream. How the Lord Cromwell, being the Kings embassador there, in like case in a perspective glass he set before his eyes King Henry the Eighth with all his lords on hunting in his forest at Windsor, and when he came into his study and was very urgent to be partaker of some rare experiment that he might report when he came into England, he willed him amongst two thousand great books to take down which he list, and begin to read one line in any place, and without book he would rehearse twenty leaves following. Cromwell did so, and in many books tried him, when in everything he exceeded his promise and conquered his expectation.
To Charles the Fifth, then Emperor, they reported how he showed the nine worthies, David, Solomon, Gideon and the rest, in that similitude and likeness that they lived upon earth. My master and I, having by the highway side gotten some reasonable familiarity with him, upon this access of miracles imputed to him, resolved to request him something in our own behalfs. I, because I was his suborned lord and master, desired him to see the lively image of Geraldine, his love, in the glass, and what at that instant she did, and with whom she was talking. He showed her us without any more ado, sick weeping on her bed, and resolved all into devout religion for the absence of her lord. At the sight thereof, he could in no wise refrain, though he had took upon him the condition of a servant, but he must forthwith frame this extemporal ditty. All soul, no earthly flesh, why dost thou fade? All gold, no worthless dross, why lookst thou pale? Sickness, how darst thou one so fair invade? Too base infirmity to work her bale; Heaven be distempered since she grieved pines, Never be dry, these my sad plaintive lines. Perch thou, my spirit, on her silver breasts, And with their pain-redoubled music beatings, Let them toss thee to world where all toil rests, Where bliss is subject to no fears defeatings; Her praise I tune whose tongue doth tune the spheres, And gets new muses in her hearers ears. Stars, fall to fetch fresh light from her rich eyes, Her bright brow drives the sun to clouds beneath, Her hairs reflex with red strakes paints the skies, Sweet morn and evening dew flows from her breath; Phoebe rules tides, she my tears tides forth draws, In her sick-bed love sits and maketh laws. Her dainty limbs tinsel her silk-soft sheets, Her rose-crowned cheeks eclipse my dazzled sight, O glass, with too much joy my thoughts thou greets, And yet thou showest me day but by twilight; Ill kiss thee for the kindness I have felt, Her lips one kiss would unto nectar melt. Though the Emperors court and the extraordinary edifying company of Cornelius Agrippa might have been arguments of weight to have arrested us a little longer there, yet Italy still stuck as a great mote in my masters eye; he thought he had travelled no farther than Wales till he had took survey of that country which was such a curious moulder of wits.
To cut off blind ambages by the highway side, we made a long stride and got to Venice in short time, where having scarce looked about us, a precious supernatural pander, apparelled in all points like a gentleman, & having half a dozen several languages in his purse, entertained us in our own tongue very paraphrastically and eloquently, & maugre all other pretended acquaintance, would have us in a violent kind of courtesy to be the guests of his appointment. His name was Petro de Campo Frego, a notable practitioner in the policy of bawdry. The place where he brought us was a pernicious courtesans house named Tabitha the temptresss, a wench that could set as civil a face on it as chastitys first martyr, Lucretia. What will you conceit to be in any saints house that was there to seek? Books, pictures, beads, crucifixes, why, there was a haberdashers shop of them in every chamber. I warrant you should not see one set of her neckercher perverted or turned awry, not a piece of a hair displaced. On her beds there was not a wrinkle of any wallowing to be found; her pillows bare out as smooth as a groaning wifes belly, & yet she was a Turk and an infidel, & had more doings than all her neighbours besides. Us for our money they used like emperors. I was master, as you heard before, & my master, the Earl, was but as my chief man whom I made my companion. So it happened (as iniquity will out at one time or other) that she, perceiving my expense had no more vents than it should have, fell in with my supposed servant, my man, and gave him half a promise of marriage if he would help to make me away, that she and he might enjoy the jewels and wealth that I had. The indifficulty of the condition thus she explained unto him: her house stood upon vaults, which in two hundred years together were never searched; who came into her house none took notice of; his fellow-servants that knew of his masters abode there should be all dispatched by him, as from his master, into sundry parts of the city about business, and when they returned, answer should be made that he lay not there any more, but had removed to Padua since their departure, & thither they must follow him. Now (quoth she), if you be disposed to make him away in their absence, you shall have my house at command. Stab, poison, or shoot him through with a pistol, all is one; into the vault he shall be thrown when the deed is done. On my bare honesty, it was a crafty quean, for she had enacted with herself, if he had been my legitimate servant, as he was one that served and supplied my necessities, when he had murdered me, to have accused him of the murder, and made all that I had hers (as I carried all my masters wealth, money, jewels, rings, or bills of exchange, continually about me). He very subtly consented to her stratagem at the first motion; kill me he would, that heavens could not withstand, and a pistol was the predestinate engine which must deliver the parting blow. God wot I was a raw young squire, and my master dealt Judasly with me, for he told me but everything that she and he agreed of. Wherefore I could not possibly prevent it, but as a man would say, avoid it. The execution day aspired to his utmost devolution; into my chamber came my honourable attendant with his pistol charged by his side, very suspiciously and sullenly; Lady Tabitha and Petro de Campo Frego, her pander, followed him at the hard heels. At their entrance I saluted them all very familiarly and merrily, & began to impart unto them what disquiet dreams had disturbed me the last night. I dreamt, quoth I, that my man Brunquel here (for no better name got he of me) came into my chamber with a pistol
charged under his arm to kill me, and that he was suborned by you, Mistress Tabitha, and my very good friend, Petro de Campo Frego; God send it turn to good, for it hath affrighted me above measure, As they were ready to enter into a colourable commonplace of the deceitful frivolousness of dreams, my trusty servant Brunquel stood quivering and quaking every joint of him, &, as it was before compacted between us, let his pistol drop from him on the sudden, wherewith I started out of my bed, and drew my rapier, and cried, Murder, murder, which made goodwife Tabitha ready to bepiss her. My servant, or my master, which you will, I took roughly by the collar, and threatened to run him through incontinent if he confessed not the truth. He, as it were, stricken with remorse of conscience (God be with him, for he could counterfeit most daintily), down on his knees, asked me forgiveness, and impeached Tabitha and Petro de Campo Frego as guilty of subornation. I very mildly and gravely gave him audience; rail on them I did not after his tale was ended, but said I would try what the law could do. Conspiracy by the custom of their country was a capital offence, and what custom or justice might afford they should be all sure to feel. I could, quoth I, acquit myself otherwise, but it is not for a stranger to be his own carver in revenge. Not a word more with Tabitha, but die she would before God or the devil would have her; she sounded and revived, and then sounded again, and after she revived again, sighed heavily, spoke faintly and pitifully, yea, and so pitifully as, if a man had not known the pranks of harlots before, he would have melted into commiseration. Tears, sighs and doleful-tuned words could not make any forcible claim to my stony ears; it was the glittering crowns that I hungered and thirsted after, & with them, for all her mock holy-day gestures, she was fain to come off before I condescended to any bargain of silence. So it fortuned (fie upon that unfortunate word of fortune) that this whore, this quean, this courtesan, this common of ten thousand, so bribing me not to bewray her, had given me a great deal of counterfeit gold which she had received of a coiner to make away a little before. Amongst the gross sum of my bribery, I, silly milksop, mistrusting no deceit, under an angel of light took what she gave me, neer turned it over, for which (O falsehood in fair show) my master & I had like to have been turned over. He that is a knight-errant, exercised in the affairs of ladies and gentlewomen, hath more places to send money to than the devil hath to send his spirits to. There was a delicate wench named Flavia Aemilia, lodging in Saint Marks street at a goldsmiths, which I would fain have had to the grand test, to try whether she were cunning in alchemy or no. Ay me, she was but a counterfeit slip, for she not only gave me the slip, but had well-nigh made me a slip-string. To her I sent my gold to beg an hour of grace; ah, graceless fornicatress, my hostess and she were confederate, who having gotten but one piece of my ill gold in their hands, devised the means to make me immortal. I could drink for anger till my head ached, to think how I was abused. Shall I shame the devil and speak the truth? To prison was I sent as principal, and my master as accessary; nor was it to a prison neither, but to the master of the mints house, who though partly our judge, and a most severe upright justice in his own nature, extremely seemed to condole our ignorant estate, and without all peradventure a present redress he had ministered if certain of our countrymen, hearing an English earl was apprehended for coining, had not come to visit us. An ill planet brought them thither, for at the first glance they knew the servant of my secrecies to be the Earl of Surrey, and I (not worthy to be named I) an outcast of his cup or pantofles. Thence, thence sprang the full period of
our infelicity. The master of the mint, our whilom refresher and consolation, now took part against us; he thought we had a mint in our heads of mischievous conspiracies against their state. Heavens bear witness with us it was not so (heavens will not always come to witness when they are called). To a straiter ward were we committed; that which we have imputatively transgressed must be answered. O, the heathen hey-pass and the intrinsical legerdemain of our special approved good pander, Petro de Campo Frego. He, although he dipped in the same dish with us every day, seeming to labour our cause very importunately, & had interpreted for us to the state from the beginning, yet was one of those treacherous brother Trulies, and abused us most clerkly. He interpreted to us with a pestilence, for whereas we stood obstinately upon it we were wrongfully detained, and that it was naught but a malicious practice of sinful Tabitha, our late hostess, he, by a fine cony-catching corrupt translation, made us plainly to confess, and cried miserere ere we had need of our neck-verse. Detestable, detestable, that the flesh and the devil should deal by their factors. Ill stand to it, there is not a pander but hath vowed paganism. The devil himself is not such a devil as he, so be he perform his function aright. He must have the back of an ass, the snout of an elephant, the wit of a fox, and the teeth of a wolf; he must fawn like a spaniel, crouch like a Jew, leer like a sheep-biter. If he be half a Puritan, and have scripture continually in his mouth, he speeds the better. I can tell you it is a trade of great promotion, & let none ever think to mount by service in foreign courts, or creep near to some magnific lords, if they be not seen in this science. O, it is the art of arts, and ten thousand times goes beyond the intelligencer. None but a staid grave civil man is capable of it; he must have exquisite courtship in him, or else he is not old who, he wants the best point in his tables. God be merciful to our pander (and that were for God to work a miracle), he was seen in all the seven liberal deadly sciences; not a sin but he was as absolute in as Satan himself. Satan could never have supplanted us so as he did. I may say to you, he planted in us the first Italianate wit that we had. During the time we lay close and took physic in this castle of contemplation, there was a magnificos wife of good calling sent to bear us company. Her husbands name was Castaldo; she hight Diamante; the cause of her committing was an ungrounded jealous suspicion which her doting husband had conceived of her chastity. One Isaac Medicus, a Bergamask, was the man he chose to make him a monster, who being a courtier, and repairing to his house very often, neither for love of him nor his wife, but only with a drift to borrow money of a pawn of wax and parchment, when he saw his expectation deluded, & that Castaldo was too chary for him to close with, he privily, with purpose of revenge, gave out amongst his copesmates that he resorted to Castaldos house for no other end but to cuckold him, and doubtfully he talked that he had, and he had not, obtained his suit. Rings which he borrowed of a light courtesan that he used to, he would fain to be taken from her fingers, and, in sum, so handled the matter that Castaldo exclaimed, Out, whore, strumpet, six-penny hackster, away with her to prison.
As glad were we almost as if they had given us liberty, that fortune lent us such a sweet pewfellow. A pretty round-faced wench was it, with black eyebrows, a high forehead, a little mouth, and a sharp nose, as fat and plum, every part of her, as a plover, a skin as slick and soft as the back of a swan; it doth me good when I remember her. Like a bird she tripped on the ground, and bare out her belly as majestical as an estrich. With a likerish rolling eye fixed piercing on the earth, and sometimes scornfully darted on the tone side, she figured forth a high discontented disdain, much like a prince puffing and storming at the treason of some mighty subject fled lately out of his power. Her very countenance repiningly wrathful, and yet clear and unwrinkled, would have confirmed the clearness of her conscience to the austerest judge in the world. If in anything she were culpable, it was in being too melancholy chaste, and showing herself as covetous of her beauty as her husband was of his bags. Many are honest because they know not how to be dishonest: she thought there was no pleasure in stolen bread, because there was no pleasure in an old mans bed. It is almost impossible that any woman should be excellently witty, and not make the utmost penny of her beauty. This age and this country of ours admits of some miraculous exceptions, but former times are my constant informers. Those that have quick motions of wit have quick motions in everything; iron only needs many strokes; only iron wits are not won without a long siege of entreaty. Gold easily bends, the most ingenious minds are easiest moved, Ingenium nobis molle Thalia dedit, saith Sapho to Phao. Who hath no merciful mild mistress, I will maintain hath no witty, but a clownish dull phlegmatic puppy to his mistress. This magnificos wife was a good loving soul that had metal enough in her to make a good wit of, but being never removed from under her mothers and her husbands wing, it was not moulded and fashioned as it ought. Causeless distrust is able to drive deceit into a simple womans head. I durst pawn the credit of a page, which is worth ambs-ace at all times, that she was immaculate honest till she met with us in prison. Marry, what temptations she had then, when fire and flax were put together, conceit with yourselves, but hold my master excusable. Alack, he was too virtuous to make her vicious; he stood upon religion and conscience, what a heinous thing it was to subvert Gods ordinance. This was all the injury he would offer her: sometimes he would imagine her in a melancholy humour to be his Geraldine, and court her in terms correspondent; nay, he would swear she was his Geraldine, and take her white hand and wipe his eyes with it, as though the very touch of her might staunch his anguish. Now he would kneel & kiss the ground as holy ground which she vouchsafed to bless from barrenness by her steps. Who would have learned to write an excellent passion might have been a perfect tragic poet had he but attended half the extremity of his lament. Passion upon passion would throng one on anothers neck; he would praise her beyond the moon and stars, and that so sweetly and ravishingly as I persuade myself he was more in love with his own curious-forming fancy than her face, and truth it is, many become passionate lovers only to win praise to their wits. He praised, he prayed, he desired and besought her to pity him that perished for her. From this his entranced mistaking ecstasy could no man remove him. Who loveth
resolutely will include everything under the name of his love. From prose he would leap into verse, and with these or suchlike rimes assault her: If I must die, O let me choose my death; Suck out my soul with kisses, cruel maid, In thy breasts crystal balls embalm my breath, Dole it all out in sighs when I am laid; Thy lips on mine like cupping-glasses clasp, Let our tongues meet and strive as they would sting, Crush out my wind with one strait-girting grasp, Stabs on my heart keep time whilst thou dost sing; Thy eyes like searing-irons burn out mine, In thy fair tresses stifle me outright, Like Circes change me to a loathsome swine, So I may live forever in thy sight; Into heavens joys none can profoundly see, Except that first they meditate on thee. Sadly and verily, if my master said true, I should, if I were a wench, make many men quickly immortal. What ist, what ist for a maid fair and fresh to spend a little lipsalve on a hungry lover? My master beat the bush and kept a coil and prattling, but I caught the bird; simplicity and plainness shall carry it away in another world. Got wot he was Petro Desperato when I, stepping to her with a Dunstable tale, made up my market. A holy requiem to their souls that think to woo a woman with riddles. I had some cunning plot, you must suppose, to bring this about. Her husband had abused her, and it was very necessary she should be revenged. Seldom do they prove patient martyrs who are punished unjustly; one way or other they will cry quittance, whatsoever it cost them. No other apt means had this poor she-captived Cicely to work her hoddypeak husband a proportionable plague for his jealousy but to give his head his full loading of infamy. She thought she would make him complain for something, that now was so hard bound with an heretical opinion. How I dealt with her, guess, gentle reader, subaudi that I was in prison, and she my silly jailer. Means there was made after a months or two durance by M. John Russell, a gentleman of King Henry the Eighths chamber, who then lay ledger at Venice for England, that our cause should be favourably heard. At that time was Monsieur Petro Aretino searcher and chief inquisitor to the college of courtesans. Divers and sundry ways was this Aretine beholding to the King of England, especially for by this foresaid Master John Russell, a little before, he had sent him a pension of four hundred crowns yearly during his life. Very forcibly was he dealt withal to strain the utmost of his credit for our delivery out of prison. Nothing at his hands we sought, but that the courtesan might be more narrowly sifted and examined. Such and so extraordinary was his care and industry herein that within few days after, Mistress Tabitha and her pander cried Peccavi, confiteor, and we were presently discharged, they for examples sake executed. Most honourably, after our enlargement, of the state were we used, & had sufficient recompense for all our troubles & wrongs.
Before I go any further, let me speak a word or two of this Aretine. It was one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made. If out of so base a thing as ink there may be extracted a spirit, he writ with naught but the spirit of ink, and his style was the spirituality of arts, and nothing else, whereas all others of his age were but the lay temporality of ink-horn terms. For indeed they were mere temporizers, and no better. His pen was sharp-pointed like a poniard; no leaf he wrote on but was like a burningglass to set on fire all his readers. With more than musket shot did he charge his quill, where he meant to inveigh. No hour but sent a whole legion of devils into some herd of swine or other. If Martial had ten muses (as he saith of himself) when he but tasted a cup of wine, he had ten score when he determined to tyrannize; neer a line of his but was able to make a man drunken with admiration. His sight pierced like lightning into the entrails of all abuses. This I must needs say, that most of his learning he got by hearing the lectures in Florence. It is sufficient that learning he had, and a conceit exceeding all learning, to quintessence everything which he heard. He was no timorous servile flatterer of the commonwealth wherein he lived. His tongue & his invention were forborne; what they thought, they would confidently utter. Princes he spared not, that in the least point transgressed. His life he contemned in comparison of the liberty of speech. Whereas some dull-brain maligners of his accuse him of that treatise De tribus impostoribus mundi, which was never contrived without a general council of devils, I am verily persuaded it was none of his, and of my mind are a number of the most judicial Italians. One reason is this, because it was published forty years after his death, and he never in his lifetime wrote anything in Latin. Certainly I have heard that one of Machiavels followers and disciples was the author of that book who, to avoid discredit, filched it forth under Aretines name a great while after he had sealed up his eloquent spirit in the grave. Too much gall did that wormwood of Ghibelline wits put in his ink who engraved that rhubarb epitaph on this excellent poets tombstone. Quite forsaken of all good angels was he, and utterly given over to artless envy. Four universities honoured Aretine with these rich titles, Il flagello de principi, Il veritiero, Il devino, & lunico Aretino. The French king, Frances the First, he kept in such awe that to chain his tongue he sent him a huge chain of gold in the form of tongues fashioned. Singularly hath he commented on the humanity of Christ. Besides, as Moses set forth his Genesis, so hath he set forth his Genesis also, including the contents of the whole Bible. A notable treatise hath he compiled called Il [sic] sette Psalmi poenetentiarii. All the Thomases have cause to love him, because he hath dilated so magnificently of the life of Saint Thomas. There is a good thing that he hath set forth, La vita della virgine Maria, though it somewhat smell of superstition, with a number more which here for tediousness I suppress. If lascivious he were, he may answer with Ovid, Vita verecunda est, musa iocosa mea est, My life is chaste, though wanton be my verse. Tell me, who is travelled in histories, what good poet is, or ever was there, who hath not had a little spice of wantonness in his day? Even Beza himself, by your leave. Aretine, as long as the world lives, shalt thou live. Tully, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca were never such ornaments to Italy as thou hast been. I never thought of Italy more religiously than England till I heard of thee. Peace to thy ghost, and yet methinks so indefinite a spirit should have no peace or intermission of pains, but be penning ditties to the archangels in another world. Puritans, spew forth the
venom of your dull inventions. A toad swells with thick troubled poison; you swell with poisonous perturbations; your malice hath not a clear dram of any inspired disposition. My principal subject plucks me by the elbow. Diamante, Castaldo the magnificos wife, after my enlargement proved to be with child, at which instant there grew an unsatiable famine in Venice, wherein, whether it were for mere niggardise, or that Castaldo still eat out his heart with jealousy, Saint Anne be our record, he turned up the heels very devoutly. To Master Aretine after this, once more very dutifully I appealed, requested him of favour, acknowledged former gratuities; he made no more humming or halting, but, in despite of her husbands kinsfolks, gave her her nunc dimittis, and so established her free of my company. Being out, and fully possessed of her husbands goods, she invested me in the state of a monarch. Because the time of child-birth drew nigh, and she could not remain in Venice but discredited, she decreed to travel whithersoever I would conduct her. To see Italy throughout was my proposed scope, and that way if she would travel, have with her, I had wherewithal to relieve her. From my master by her full-hand provokement I parted without leave; the state of an earl he had thrust upon me before, & now I would not bate him an ace of it. Through all the cities passed I by no other name but the young Earl of Surrey: my pomp, my apparel, train and expense was as magnifical. Memorandum, that Florence being the principal scope of my masters course, missing me, he journeyed thither without interruption. By the way as he went, he heard of another Earl of Surrey besides himself, which caused him make more haste to fetch me in, whom he little dreamed of had such art in my budget to separate the shadow from the body. Overtake me at Florence he did, where, sitting in my pontificalibus with my courtesan at supper, like Anthony and Cleopatra when they quaffed standing bowls of wine spiced with pearl together, he stole in ere we sent for him, and bade much good it us, and asked us whether we wanted any guests. If he had asked me whether I would have hanged myself, his question had been more acceptable. He that had then ungartered me might have plucked out my heart at my heels. My soul, which was made to soar upward, now sought for passage downward; my blood, as the blushing Sabine maids, surprised on the sudden by the soldiers of Romulus, ran to the nobles of blood amongst them for succour, that were in no less (if not greater) danger, so did it run for refuge to the noblest of his blood about my heart assembled, that stood in more need itself of comfort and refuge. A trembling earthquake or shaking fever assailed either of us, and I think unfeignedly if he, seeing our faint-heart agony, had not soon cheered and refreshed us, the dogs had gone together by the ears under the table for our fear-dropped limbs. Instead of menacing or affrighting me with his sword or his frowns for my superlative presumption, he burst out into laughter above ela, to think how bravely napping he had took us, and how notably we were damped and struck dead in the nest with the unexpected view of his presence.
Ah, quoth he, my noble Lord (after his tongue had borrowed a little leave of his laughter), is it my luck to visit you thus unlooked for? I am sure you will bid me welcome, if it be but for the names sake. It is a wonder to see two English earls of one house at one time together in Italy. I, hearing him so pleasant, began to gather up my spirits, and replied as boldly as I durst: Sir, you are welcome; your name which I borrowed I have not abused; some large sums of money this, my sweet mistress Diamante, hath made me master of, which I knew not how better to employ for the honour of my country than by spending it munificently under your name. No Englishman would I have renowned for bounty, magnificence and courtesy but you; under your colours all my meritorious works I was desirous to shroud. Deem it no insolence to add increase to your fame. Had I basely and beggarly, wanting ability to support any part of your royalty, undertook the estimation of this high calling, your allegement of injury had been the greater, and my defence less authorized. It will be thought but a policy of yours thus to send one before you who, being a follower of yours, shall keep and uphold the estate and port of an earl. I have known many earls myself that in their own person would go very plain, but delighted to have one that belonged to them (being loaden with jewels, apparelled in cloth of gold and all the rich embroidery that might be) to stand bare-headed unto him, arguing thus much, that if the greatest men went not more sumptuous, how more great than the greatest was he that could command one going so sumptuous. A noblemans glory appeareth in nothing so much as in the pomp of his attendants. What is the glory of the sun, but that the moon and so many millions of stars borrow their lights from him? If you can reprehend me of any one illiberal licentious action I have disparaged your name with, heap shame on me prodigally; I beg no pardon or pity. Non veniunt in idem pudor & amor, he was loath to detract from one that he loved so. Beholding with his eyes that I clipped not the wings of his honour, but rather increased them with additions of expense, he entreated me as if I had been an embassador; he gave me his hand, and swore he had no more hearts but one, and I should have half of it, in that I so enhanced his obscured reputation. One thing, quoth he, my sweet Jack, I will entreat thee (it shall be but one), that though I am well pleased thou shouldst be the ape of my birthright (as what nobleman hath not his ape & his fool?), yet that thou be an ape without a clog, not carry thy courtesan with thee. I told him that a king could do nothing without his treasury; this courtesan was my purse-bearer, my countenance and supporter. My earldom I would sooner resign than part with such a special benefactor. Resign it I will however, since I am thus challenged of stolen goods by the true owner; lo, into my former state I return again; poor Jack Wilton and your servant am I, as I was at the beginning, and so will I persevere to my lifes ending. That theme was quickly cut off, & other talk entered in place, of what I have forgot, but talk it was, and talk let it be, & talk it shall be, for I do not mean here to remember it. We supped, we got to bed, rose in the morning, on my master I waited, & the first thing he did after he was up, he went and visited the house where his Geraldine was born, at sight whereof he was so impassioned that in the open street, but for me, he would have made an oration in praise of it. Into it we were conducted, and showed each several room thereto appertaining. O, but when he came to the chamber where his Geraldines clear sunbeams first thrust themselves into this cloud of flesh, and acquainted mortality with
the purity of angels, then did his mouth overflow with Magnificats; his tongue thrust the stars out of heaven, and eclipsed the sun and moon with comparisons; Geraldine was the soul of heaven, sole daughter and heir to primus motor. The alchemy of his eloquence, out of the incomprehensible drossy matter of clouds and air, distilled no more quintessence than would make his Geraldine complete fair. In praise of the chamber that was so illuminatively honoured with her radiant conception, he penned this sonnet: Fair room, the presence of sweet beautys pride, The place the sun upon the earth did hold When Phaeton his chariot did misguide, The tower where Jove rained down himself in gold, Prostrate, as holy ground Ill worship thee; Our ladys chapel henceforth be thou named; Here first loves queen put on mortality, And with her beauty all the world inflamed. Heavens chambers harbouring fiery cherubins Are not with thee in glory to compare; Lightning it is, not light, which in thee shines, None enter thee but straight entranced are. O, if Elysium be above the ground, Then here it is, where naught but joy is found. Many other poems and epigrams in that chambers patient alabaster enclosure (which her melting eyes long sithence had softened) were curiously engraved. Diamonds thought themselves Dii mundi if they might but carve her name on the naked glass. With them on it did he anatomize these body-wanting mots, Dulce puella malum est. Quod fugit ipse sequor. Amor est mihi causa sequendi. O infoelix ego. Cur vivi? cur perii? Non patienter amo. Tantum patiatur amari. After the view of these venerial monuments, he published a proud challenge in the Duke of Florence court against all comers (whether Christians, Turks, Jews or Saracens) in defence of his Geraldines beauty. More mildly was it accepted in that she whom he defended was a town-born child of that city, or else the pride of the Italian would have prevented him ere he should have come to perform it. The Duke of Florence nevertheless sent for him and demanded him of his estate and the reason that drew him thereto, which when he was advertised of to the full, he granted all countries whatsoever as well enemies and outlaws as friends and confederates, free access and regress into his dominions unmolested, until that insolent trial were ended. The right honourable and ever renowned Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, my singular good lord and master, entered the lists after this order. His armour was all intermixed with lilies and roses, and the bases thereof bordered with nettles and weeds, signifying stings, crosses and overgrowing encumbrances in his love, his helmet round proportioned like a gardeners water-pot, from which seemed to issue forth small threads of water, like cittern-strings, that not only did moisten the lilies and roses, but did fructify as well the nettles and weeds, and made them overgrow their liege lords. Whereby he did import thus much, that the tears that issued from his brains, as those artificial distillations issued from the well counterfeit water-pot on his head, watered and gave life as well to
his mistress disdain (resembled to nettles and weeds) as increase of glory to her carecausing beauty (comprehended under the lilies and roses). The symbol thereto annexed was this, Ex lachrimis lachrimae. The trappings of his horse were pounced and bolstered out with rough plumed silver plush, in full proportion and shape of an estrich. On the breast of the horse were the fore-parts of this greedy bird advanced, whence, as his manner is, he reached out his long neck to the reins of the bridle, thinking they had been iron, & still seemed to gape after the golden bit, and ever as the courser did raise or curvet, to have swallowed it half in. His wings, which he never useth but running, being spread full sail, made his lusty steed as proud under him as he had been some other Pegasus, & so quiveringly and tenderly were these his broad wings bound to either side of him, that as he paced up and down the tilt-yard in his majesty ere the knights were entered, they seemed wantonly to fan in his face and make a flickering sound, such as eagles do, swiftly pursuing their prey in the air. On either of his wings, as the estrich hath a sharp goad or prick wherewith he spurreth himself forward in his sail-assisted race, so this artificial estrich, on the inbent knuckle of the pinion of either wing, had embossed crystal eyes affixed, wherein wheel-wise were circularly engrafted sharp-pointed diamonds, as rays from those eyes derived, that like the rowel of a spur ran deep into his horses sides, and made him more eager in his course. Such a fine dim shine did these crystal eyes and these round-enranked diamonds make through their bollen swelling bowers of feathers as if it had been a candle in a paper lantern, or a glow-worm in a bush by night, glistering through the leaves & briers. The tail of the estrich, being short and thick, served very fitly for a plume to trick up his horse-tail with, so that every part of him was as naturally coapted as might be. The word of this device was Aculeo alatus, I spread my wings only spurred with her eyes. The moral of the whole is this, that as the estrich, the most burning-sighted bird of all others, insomuch as the female of them hatcheth not her eggs by covering them, but by the effectual rays of her eyes, as he, I say, outstrippeth the nimblest trippers of his feathered condition in footmanship, only spurred on with the needle-quickening goad under his side, so he, no less burning-sighted than the estrich, spurred on to the race of honour by the sweet rays of his mistress eyes, persuaded himself he should outstrip all other in running to the goal of glory, only animated and incited by her excellence. And as the estrich will eat iron, swallow any hard metal whatsoever, so would he refuse no iron adventure, no hard task whatsoever, to sit in the grace of so fair a commander. The order of his shield was this: it was framed like a burning-glass, beset round with flamecoloured feathers, on the outside whereof was his mistress picture adorned as beautiful as art could portraiture, on the inside a naked sword tied in a true-love knot; the mot, Militat omnis amans, signifying that in a true-love knot his sword was tied, to defend and maintain the features of his mistress. Next him entered the black knight, whose beaver was pointed all torn & bloody, as though he had new come from combating with a bear; his head-piece seemed to be a little oven fraught with smothering flames, for nothing but sulphur and smoke voided out at the clefts of his beaver. His bases were all embroidered with snakes and adders, engendered of the abundance of innocent blood that was shed. His horses trappings were throughout bespangled with honey-spots, which are no blemishes, but ornaments.
On his shield he bare the sun full shining on a dial at his going down; the word, Sufficit tandem. After him followed the knight of the owl, whose armour was a stubbed tree overgrown with ivy, his helmet fashioned like an owl sitting on the top of this ivy; on his bases were wrought all kind of birds, as on the ground, wondering(?) about him; the word, Ideo mirum quia monstrum; his horses furniture was framed like a cart, scattering whole sheaves of corn amongst hogs; the word, Liberalitas liberalitate perit. On his shield a bee entangled in sheeps wool; the mot, Frontis nulla fides. The fourth that succeeded was a well-proportioned knight in an armour imitating rust, whose head-piece was prefigured like flowers growing in a narrow pot, where they had not any space to spread their roots or disperse their flourishing. His bases embellished with open-armed hands, scattering gold amongst truncheons; the word, Cura futuri est. His horse was harnessed with leaden chains, having the outside gilt, or at least saffroned instead of gilt, to decipher a holy or golden pretence of a covetous purpose; the sentence, Cani capilli mei compedes; on his target he had a number of crawling worms kept under by a block; the faburden, Speramus lucent. The fifth was the forsaken knight, whose helmet was crowned with nothing but cypress and willow garlands; over his armour he had Hymens nuptial robe, dyed in a dusky yellow, and all-to-bedefaced and discoloured with spots and stains. The enigma, Nos quoque florimus, as who should say, We have been in fashion; his steed was adorned with orange-tawny eyes, such as those have that have the yellow jaundice, that make all things yellow they look upon, with this brief, Qui invident egent, Those that envy are hungry. The sixth was the knight of the storms, whose helmet was round moulded like the moon, and all his armour like waves, whereon the shine of the moon, sleightly silvered, perfectly represented moonshine in the water; his bases were the banks or shores that bounded in the streams. The spoke was this, Frustra pius, as much to say as, Fruitless service. On his shield he set forth a lion driven from his prey by a dunghill-cock. The word, Non vi sed voce, not by violence but by voice. The seventh had, like the giants that sought to scale heaven in despite of Jupiter, a mount overwhelming his head and whole body, his bases outlaid with arms and legs which the skirts of that mountain left uncovered. Under this did he characterize a man desirous to climb to the heaven of honour, kept under with the mountain of his princes command, and yet had he arms and legs exempted from the suppression of that mountain. The word, Tu mihi criminis author (alluding to his princes command), Thou art the occasion of my imputed cowardice. His horse was trapped in the earthy strings of tree-roots, which though their increase was stubbed down to the ground, yet were they not utterly deaded, but hoped for an after resurrection. The word, Spe alor, I hope for a spring. Upon his shield he bare a ball, sticken down with a mans hand that it might mount. The word, Ferior ut efferar, I suffer myself to be contemned because I will climb. The eighth had all his armour throughout engrailed like a crabbed briery hawthorn bush, out of which notwithstanding sprung (as a good child of an ill father) fragrant blossoms of delightful mayflowers, that made (according to the nature of may) a most odoriferous smell. In midst of this his snowy-curled top, round wrapped together on the ascending of his crest sat a solitary nightingale close encaged, with a thorn at her breast, having this mot in her mouth, Luctus monumenta manebunt. At the foot of this bush, represented on
his bases, lay a number of black swollen toads gasping for wind, and summer-lived grasshoppers gaping after dew, both which were choked with excessive drouth for want of shade. The word, Non sine vulnere viresco, I spring not without impediments, alluding to the toads and suchlike that erst lay sucking at his roots, but now were turned out, and near choked with drought. His horse was suited in black sandy earth (as adjacent to this bush) which was here and there patched with short burnt grass, and as thick ink-dropped with toiling ants and emmets as ever it might crawl, who, in the full of the summer moon (ruddy garnished on his horses forehead) hoarded up their provision of grain against winter. The word, Victrix fortunae sapientia, Providence prevents misfortune. On his shield he set forth the picture of death doing alms-deeds to a number of poor desolate children. The word, Nemo alius explicat, No other man takes pity upon us. What his meaning was herein I cannot imagine, except death had done him and his brethren some great good turn in ridding them of some untoward parent or kinsman that would have been their confusion, for else I cannot see how death should have been said to do almsdeeds, except he had deprived them suddenly of their lives, to deliver them out of some further misery, which could not in any wise be, because they were yet living. The ninth was the infant knight, who on his armour had enamelled a poor young infant put into a ship without tackling, masts, furniture or anything. This weather-beaten or illapparelled ship was shadowed on his bases, and the slender compass of his body set forth the right picture of an infant. The waves wherein the ship was tossed were fretted on his steeds trappings so movingly that, ever as he offered to bound or stir, they seemed to bounce and toss, and sparkle brine out of their hoary silver billows; the mot, Inopem me copia fecit, as much to say as, The rich prey makes the thief. On his shield he expressed an old goat that made a young tree to wither only with biting it; the word thereto, Primo extinguor in aeuo, I am frost-bitten ere I come out of the blade. It were here too tedious to manifest all the discontented or amorous devises that were used in this tournament; the shields only of some few I will touch, to make short work. One bare for his impress the eyes of young swallows coming again after they were plucked out, with this mot, Et addit et addimit, Your beauty both bereaves and restores my sight. Another, a siren smiling when the sea rageth and ships are overwhelmed, including a cruel woman, that laughs, sings and scorns at her lovers tears and the tempests of his despair; the word, Cuncta pereunt, All my labour is ill employed. A third, being troubled with a curst, a treacherous, and wanton wife, used this similitude. On his shield he caused to be limned Pompeys ordinance for parricides, as namely, a man put into a sack with a cock, a serpent, and an ape, interpreting that his wife was a cock for her crowing, a serpent for her stinging, and an ape for her unconstant wantonness, with which ill qualities he was so beset that thereby he was thrown into a sea of grief; the word, Extremum malorum mulier, The utmost of evils is a woman. A fourth, who, being a person of suspected religion, was continually haunted with intelligencers and spies that thought to prey upon him for that he had, he could not devise which way to shake them off but by making away that he had. To obscure this he used no other fancy but a number of blind flies, whose eyes the cold had closed; the word, Aurum reddit
acutissimum, Gold is the only physic for the eyesight. A fifth, whose mistress was fallen into a consumption, and yet would condescend to no treaty of love, emblazoned for his complaint grapes that withered for want of pressing. The ditty to the mot, Quid regna sine usu. I will rehearse no more, but I have a hundred other; let this be the upshot of those shows, they were the admirablest that ever Florence yielded. To particularize their manner of encounter were to describe the whole art of tilting. Some had like to have fallen over their horses necks, and so break their necks in breaking their staves. Others ran at a buckle instead of a button, and peradventure whetted their spears points idly gliding on their enemies sides, but did no other harm. Others ran a cross at their adversarys left elbow, yea, and by your leave sometimes let not the lists scape scot-free, they were so eager. Others, because they would be sure not to be unsaddled with the shock when they came to the spears utmost proof, they threw it over the right shoulder, and so tilted backward, for forward they durst not. Another had a monstrous spite at the pommel of his rivals saddle, and thought to have thrust his spear twixt his legs without rasing any skin, and carried him clean away on it as a cowl-staff. Another held his spear to his nose, or his nose to his spear, as though he had been discharging his caliver, and ran at the right foot of his fellows steed. Only the Earl of Surrey, my master, observed the true measures of honour, and made all his encounterers new scour their armour in the dust; so great was his glory that day as Geraldine was thereby eternally glorified. Never such a bountiful master came amongst the heralds, (not that he did enrich them with any plentiful purse largesse, but that by his stern assaults he tithed them more rich offals of bases, of helmets, of armour, than the rent of their offices came to in ten years before). What would you have more? The trumpets proclaimed him master of the field, the trumpets proclaimed Geraldine the exceptionless fairest of women. Everyone strived to magnify him more than other. The Duke of Florence, whose name (as my memory serveth me) was Paschal de Medicis, offered him such large proffers to stay with him as it were incredible to report. He would not; his desire was, as he had done in Florence, so to proceed throughout all the chief cities in Italy. If you ask why he began not this at Venice first, it was because he would let Florence, his mistress native city, have the maidenhead of his chivalry. As he came back again he thought to have enacted something there worthy the annals of posterity, but he was debarred both of that and all his other determinations, for, continuing in feasting and banqueting with the Duke of Florence and the princes of Italy there assembled, post-haste letters came to him from the King, his master, to return as speedily as he could possible into England, whereby his fame was quite cut off by the shins, and there was no reprieve but beso las manos, he must into England, and I with my courtesan travelled forward in Italy. What adventures happened him after we parted, I am ignorant, but Florence we both forsook, and I, having a wonderful ardent inclination to see Rome, the queen of the world & metrapolitan mistress of all other cities, made thither with my bag and baggage as fast as I could. Attained thither, I was lodged at the house of one Johannes de Imola, a Roman cavaliero, who, being acquainted with my courtesans deceased doting husband, for his sake used us with all the familiarity that might be. He showed us all the monuments that were to be
seen, which are as many as there have been emperors, consuls, orators, conquerors, famous painters or players in Rome. Till this day not a Roman (if he be a right Roman indeed) will kill a rat, but he will have some registered remembrance of it. There was a poor fellow during my remainder there that, for a new trick that he had invented of killing cimexes and scorpions, had his mountebank banner hung up on a high pillar, with an inscription about it longer than the King of Spains style. I thought these cimexes, like the Cimbrians, had been some strange nation he had brought under, and they were no more but things like lice, which alive have the most venomous sting that may be, and being dead do stink out of measure. Saint Austin compareth heretics unto them. The chiefest thing that my eyes delighted in was the church of the seven Sibyls, which is a most miraculous thing, all their prophecies and oracles being there enrolled, as also the beginning and ending of their whole catalogue of the heathen gods, with their manner of worship. There are a number of other shrines and statues dedicated to the emperors, and withal some statues of idolatry reserved for detestation. I was at Pontius Pilates house, and pissed against it. The name of the place I remember not, but it is as one goes to Saint Pauls church not far from the Jews(?) piazza. There is the prison yet packed up together (an old rotten thing) where the man that was condemned to death, and could have nobody come to him and succour him but was searched, was kept alive a long space by sucking his daughters breasts. These are but the shop dust of the sights that I saw, and in truth I did not behold with any care hereafter to report, but contented my eye for the present, & so let them pass; should I memorize half the miracles which they there told me had been done about martyrs tombs, or the operations of the earth of the Sepulchre and other relics brought from Jerusalem, I should be counted the most monstrous liar that ever came in print. The ruins of Pompeys theatre, reputed one of the nine wonders of the world, Gregory the Sixths [sic?] tomb, Priscillas grate, or the thousands of pillars areared amongst the rased foundations of old Rome, it were frivolous to specify, since he that hath but once drunk with a traveller talks of them. Let me be a historiographer of my own misfortunes, and not meddle with the continued trophies of so old a triumphing city. At my first coming to Rome, I, being a youth of the English cut, ware my hair long, went apparelled in light colours, and imitated four or five sundry nations in my attire at once, which no sooner was noted, but I had all the boys of the city in a swarm wondering about me. I had not gone a little farther, but certain officers crossed the way of me, and demanded to see my rapier, which, when they found (as also my dagger) with his point unblunted, they would have haled me headlong to the strappado, but that with money I appeased them, and my fault was more pardonable in that I was a stranger, altogether ignorant of their customs. Note, by the way, that it is the use in Rome for all men whatsoever to wear their hair short, which they do not so much for conscience sake, or any religion they place in it,
but because the extremity of the heat is such there that, if they should not do so, they should not have a hair left on their heads to stand upright when they were scared with sprights. And he is counted no gentleman amongst them that goes not in black; they dress their jesters and fools only in fresh colours, and say variable garments do argue unstaidness and unconstancy of affections. The reason of their straight ordinance for carrying weapons without points is this: the bandettos, which are certain outlaws that lie betwixt Rome and Naples, and besiege the passage, that none can travel that way without robbing. Now and then, hired for some few crowns, they will steal to Rome and do a murder, and betake them to their heels again. Disguised as they go, they are not known from strangers; sometimes they will shroud themselves under the habit of grave citizens. In this consideration, neither citizen or stranger, gentleman, knight, marquess, or any may wear any weapon, endamageable upon pain of the strappado. I bought it out; let others buy experience of me better cheap. To tell you of the rare pleasures of their gardens, their baths, their vineyards, their galleries, were to write a second part of the Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Devices. Why, you should not come into any mans house of account but he had fishponds and little orchards on the top of his leads. If by rain or any other means those ponds were so full they need to be sluiced or let out, even of their superfluities they made melodious use, for they had great wind instruments instead of leaden spouts, that went duly on consort, only with this waters rumbling descent. I saw a summer banqueting house belonging to a merchant that was the marvel of the world, & could not be matched except God should make another paradise. It was built round of green marble like a theatre without; within there was a heaven and earth comprehended both under one roof: the heaven was a clear overhanging vault of crystal wherein the sun and moon and each visible star had his true similitude, shine, situation and motion, and, by what enwrapped art I cannot conceive, these spheres in their proper orbs observed their circular wheelings and turnings, making a certain kind of soft angelical murmuring music in their often windings & going about, which music the philosophers say in the true heaven, by reason of the grossness of our senses, we are not capable of. For the earth, it was counterfeited in that likeness that Adam lorded out it before his fall. A wide vast spacious room it was, such as we would conceit Prince Arthurs hall to be, where he feasted all his Knights of the Round Table together every Pentecost. The floor was painted with the beautifullest flowers that ever mans eye admired, which so lineally were delineated that he that viewed them afar off, and had not directly stood poringly over them, would have sworn they had lived indeed. The walls round about were hedged with olives and palm trees, and all other odoriferous fruit-bearing plants, which at any solemn entertainment dropped myrrh and frankincense. Other trees, that bare no fruit, were set in just order one against another, & divided the room into a number of shady lanes, leaving but one overspreading pine-tree arbour where we sat and banqueted. On the well-clothed boughs of this conspiracy of pine-trees against the resembled sunbeams, were perched as many sorts of shrill-breasted birds as the summer hath allowed for singing men in her sylvan chapels, who, though there [sic?] were bodies without souls, and sweet resembled substances without sense, yet by the mathematical experiments of long silver pipes secretly enrinded in the entrails of the boughs whereon they sat, and undiscernably conveyed under their bellies into their small
throats sloping, they whistled and freely carolled their natural field-note. Neither went those silver pipes straight, but by many edged unsundered writhings & crankled wanderings aside, strayed from bough to bough into an hundred throats. But into this silver pipe so writhed and wandering aside, if any demand how the wind was breathed, forsooth, the tail of the silver pipe stretched itself into the mouth of a great pair of bellows, where it was close soldered, and bailed about with iron; it could not stir or have any vent betwixt. Those bellows, with the rising and falling of leaden plummets wound up on a wheel, did beat up and down uncessantly, and so gathered in wind, serving with one blast all the snarled pipes to and fro of one tree at once. But so closely were all those organizing implements obscured in the corpulent trunks of the trees that every man there present renounced conjectures of art, and said it was done by enchantment. One tree for his fruit bare nothing but unchained chirping birds, whose throats being conduit-piped with squared narrow shells, & charged syringe-wise with searching sweet water driven in by a little wheel for the nonce, that fed it afar off, made a spirting sound, such as chirping is, in bubbling upwards through the rough crannies of their closed bills. Under tuition of the shade of every tree that I have signified to be in this round hedge, on delightful leavy cloisters lay a wild tyrannous beast asleep all prostrate; under some, two together, as the dog nuzzling his nose under the neck of the deer, the wolf glad to let the lamb lie upon him to keep him warm, the lion suffering the ass to cast his leg over him, preferring one honest unmannerly friend before a number of crouching pickthanks. No poisonous beast there reposed (poison was not, before our parent Adam transgressed). There were no sweet-breathing panthers that would hide their terrifying heads to betray, no men-imitating hyenas that changed their sex to seek after blood. Wolves, as now when they are hungry eat earth, so then did they feed on earth only, and abstained from innocent flesh. The unicorn did not put his horn into the stream to chase away venom before he drunk, for then there was no such thing extant in the water or on the earth. Serpents were as harmless to mankind as they are still one to another; the rose had no cankers, the leaves no caterpillars, the sea no sirens, the earth no usurers. Goats then bare wool, as it is recorded in Sicily they do yet. The torrid zone was habitable; only jays loved to steal gold and silver to build their nests withal, and none cared for covetous clientry, or running to the Indies. As the elephant understands his country speech, so every beast understood what man spoke. The ant did not hoard up against winter, for there was no winter, but a perpetual spring, as Ovid saith. No frosts to make the green almond tree counted rash and improvident in budding soonest of all other, or the mulberry tree a strange politician, in blooming late and ripening early. The peach-tree at the first planting was fruitful and wholesome, whereas now, till it be transplanted, it is poisonous and hateful [sic?]; young plants for their sap had balm, for their yellow gum, glistering amber. The evening dewed not water on flowers, but honey. Such a golden age, such a good age, such an honest age was set forth in this banqueting house. O Rome, if thou hast in thee such soul-exalting objects, what a thing is heaven in comparison of thee, of which Mercators globe is a perfecter model than thou art? Yet this I must say to the shame of us Protestants; if good works may merit heaven, they do them, we talk of them. Whether superstition or no makes them unprofitable servants, that
let pulpits decide, but there you shall have the bravest ladies, in gowns of beaten gold, washing pilgrims & poor soldiers feet, and doing nothing, they and their waiting-maids, all the year long, but making shirts and bands for them against they come by in distress. Their hospitals are more like noblemens houses than otherwise, so richly furnished, clean kept, and hot perfumed that a soldier would think it a sufficient recompense for all his travail and his wounds, to have such a heavenly retiring place. For the Pope and his pontificalibus I will not deal with; only I will dilate unto you what happened whilst I was in Rome. So it fell out that it being a vehement hot summer when I was a sojourner there, there entered such a hot-spurred plague as hath not been heard of: why, it was but a word and a blow, Lord have mercy upon us, and he was gone. Within three-quarters of a year in that one city there died of it a hundred thousand; look in Lanquets chronicle and you shall find it. To smell of a nosegay that was poisoned, and turn your nose to a house that had the plague, it was all one. The clouds, like a number of cormorants that keep their corn till it stink and is musty, kept in their stinking exhalations till they had almost stifled all Romes inhabitants. Physicians greediness of gold made them greedy of their destiny. They would come to visit those with whose infirmity their art had no affinity, and even as a man with a fee should be hired to hang himself, so would they quietly go home and die presently after they had been with their patients. All day and all night long carmen did nothing but go up and down the streets with their carts and cry, Have you any dead bodies to bury, and had many times out of one house their whole loading; one grave was the sepulchre of seven-score, one bed was the altar whereon whole families were offered. The walls were hoared and furred with the moist scorching steam of their desolation. Even as before a gun is shot off, a stinking smoke funnels out and prepares the way for him, so before any gave up the ghost, death, arrayed in a stinking smoke, stopped his nostrils and crammed itself full into his mouth that closed up his fellows eyes, to give him warning to prepare for his funeral. Some died sitting at their meat, others as they were asking counsel of the physician for their friends. I saw at the house where I was hosted a maid bring her master warm broth for to comfort him, and she sink down dead herself ere he had half eat it up. During this time of visitation, there was a Spaniard, one Esdras of Granado, a notable bandetto, authorized by the Pope because he had assisted him in some murders. This villain, colleagued with one Bartol, a desperate Italian, practised to break into those rich mens houses in the night where the plague had most reigned, and if there were none but the mistress and maid left alive, to ravish them both, & bring away all the wealth they could fasten on. In an hundred chief citizens houses where the hand of God had been, they put this outrage in ure. Though the women so ravished cried out, none durst come near them for fear of catching their deaths by them, and some thought they cried out only with the tyranny of the malady. Amongst the rest, the house where I lay he invaded, where all being snatched up by sickness but the goodwife of the house, a noble & chaste matron called Heraclide, and her zany, and I and my courtesan, he, knocking at the door late in the night, ran in to the matron and left me and my love to the mercy of his companion. Who finding me in bed (as the time required) ran at me full with his rapier,
thinking I would resist him, but as good luck was, I escaped him and betook me to my pistol in the window uncharged. He, fearing it had been charged, threatened to run her through if I once offered but to aim at him. Forth the chamber he dragged her, holding his rapier at her heart, whilst I cried out, Save her, kill me, and Ill ransom her with a thousand ducats, but lust prevailed, no prayers would be heard. Into my chamber I was locked, and watchmen charged (as he made semblance where there was none there) to knock me down with their halberds if I stirred but a foot down the stairs. Then threw I myself pensive against my pallet, and dared all the devils in hell, now I was alone, to come and fight with me one after another in defence of that detestable rape. I beat my head against the walls & called them bawds because they would see such a wrong committed, and not fall upon him. To return to Heraclide below, whom the ugliest of all blood-suckers, Esdras of Granado, had under shrift. First he assailed her with rough means, and slew her zany at her foot, that stepped before her in rescue. Then when all armed resist was put to flight, he assayed her with honey speech, & promised her more jewels and gifts than he was able to pilfer in an hundrd years after. He discoursed unto her how he was countenanced and borne out by the Pope, and how many execrable murders with impunity he had executed on them that displeased him. This is the eightscore house (quoth he) that hath done homage unto me, & here I will prevail, or I will be torn in pieces. Ah, quoth Heraclide (with a heart-rending sigh), art thou ordained to be a worse plague to me than the plague itself? Have I escaped the hands of God to fall into the hands of man? Hear me, Jehovah, & be merciful in ending my misery. Dispatch me incontinent, dissolute homicide, deaths usurper. Here lies my husband stone cold on the dewy floor. If thou beest of more power than God to strike me speedily, strike home, strike deep, send me to heaven with my husband. Ay me, it is the spoil of my honour thou seekest in my souls troubled departure; thou art some devil sent to tempt me. Avoid from me, Satan, my soul is my Saviours; to him I have bequeathed it, from him can no man take it. Jesu, Jesu, spare me undefiled for thy spouse; Jesu, Jesu, never fail those that put their trust in thee. With that she fell in a sound, and her eyes in their closing seemed to spawn forth in their outward sharp corners new-created seed-pearl, which the world before never set eye on. Soon he rigorously revived her, & told her that he had a charter above scripture; she must yield, she should yield, see who durst remove her out of his hands. Twixt life and death thus she faintly replied, How thinkest thou, is there a power above thy power? If there be, he is here present in punishment, and on thee will take present punishment if thou persistest in thy enterprise. In the time of security every man sinneth, but when death substitutes one friend his special bailie to arrest another by infection, and disperseth his quiver into ten thousand hands at once, who is it but looks about him? A man that hath an unevitable huge stone hanging only by a hair over his head, which he looks every paternoster-while to fall and pash him in pieces, will not he be submissively sorrowful for his transgressions, refrain himself from the least thought of folly, and purify his spirit with contrition and penitence? Gods hand, like a huge stone, hangs inevitably over thy head; what is the plague but death playing the provost-marshal, to execute all those that will not be called home by any other means? This my dear knights body is a quiver of his arrows, which already are shot into thee invisibly. Even as the age of goats is known by the knots on their horns, so think the anger of God apparently visioned or shown unto thee in the knitting of my brows. A hundred have I buried out of my house, at all whose departures I have been present. A
hundreds infection is mixed with my breath; lo, now I breathe upon thee, a hundred deaths come upon thee. Repent betimes, imagine there is a hell though not a heaven; that hell thy conscience is throughly acquainted with, if thou hast murdered half so many as thou unblushingly braggest. As Maecenas in the latter end of his days was seven years without sleep, so these seven weeks have I took no slumber; my eyes have kept continual watch against the devil, my enemy. Death I deemed my friend (friends fly from us in adversity); death, the devil, and all the ministering spirits of temptation are watching about thee to entrap thy soul (by my abuse) to eternal damnation. It is thy soul thou mayest save, only by saving mine honour. Death will have thy body infallibly for breaking into my house, that he had selected for his private habitation. If thou ever camest of a woman, or hopest to be saved by the seed of a woman, pity a woman. Deers oppressed with dogs, when they cannot take soil, run to men for succour; to whom should women in their disconsolate and desperate estate run but to men (like the deer) for succour and sanctuary? If thou be a man, thou wilt succour me, but if thou be a dog and a brute beast, thou wilt spoil me, defile me, and tear me; either renounce Gods image, or renounce the wicked mind thou bearest. These words might have moved a compound heart of iron and adamant, but in his heart they obtained no impression, for he sitting in his chair of state against the door all the while that she pleaded, learning his overhanging gloomy eyebrows on the pommel of his unsheathed sword, he never looked up or gave her a word, but when he perceived she expected his answer of grace or utter perdition, he start up and took her currishly by the neck, asking how long he should stay for her Ladyship. Thou tellst me (quoth he) of the plague, & the heavy hand of God, and thy hundred infected breaths in one; I tell thee, I have cast the dice an hundred times for the galleys in Spain, and yet still missed the ill chance. Our order of casting is this: if there be a general or captain new come home from the wars, & hath some 4 or 500 crowns overplus of the Kings in his hand, and his soldiers all paid, he makes proclamation that whatsoever two resolute men will go to dice for it, and win the bridle or lose the saddle, to such a place let them repair, and it shall be ready for them. Thither go I, and find another such needy squire resident. The dice run, I win, he is undone. I winning have the crowns, he losing is carried to the galleys. This is our custom, which a hundred times and more hath paid me custom of crowns when the poor fellows have gone to gehenna had coarse bread and whipping-cheer all their life after. Now thinkest thou that I, who so oft have escaped such a number of hellish dangers, only depending upon the turning of a few pricks, can be scare-bugged with the plague? What plague canst thou name worse than I have had? Whether diseases, imprisonment, poverty, banishment, I have passed through them all. My own mother gave I a box of the ear to, and brake her neck down a pair of stairs, because she would not go in to a gentleman when I bade her; my sister I sold to an old leno to make his best of her; any kinswoman that I have, knew I she were not a whore, myself would make her one; thou art a whore, thou shalt be a whore, in spite of religion or precise ceremonies. Thereupon he flew upon her, and threatened her with his sword, but it was not that he meant to wound her with. He grasped her by the ivory throat, and shook her as a mastiff would shake a young bear, swearing and staring he would tear out her weasand if she refused. Not content with that savage constraint, he slipped his sacrilegious hand from
her lily lawn-skinned neck, and enscarfed it in her long silver locks, which with struggling were unrolled. Backward he dragged her, even as a man backward would pluck a tree down by the twigs, and then, like a traitor that is drawn to execution on a hurdle, he traileth her up and down the chamber by those tender untwisted braids, and setting his barbarous foot on her bare snowy breast, bade her yield or have her wind stamped out. She cried, Stamp, stifle me in my hair, hang me up by it on a beam, and so let me die, rather than I should go to heaven with a beam in my eye. No, quoth he, nor stamped nor stifled, nor hanged, nor to heaven shalt thou go till I have had my will of thee; thy busy arms in these silken fetters Ill enfold. Dismissing her hair from his fingers, and pinioning her elbows therewithal, she struggled, she wrested, but all was in vain. So struggling and so resisting, her jewels did sweat, signifying there was poison coming towards her. On the hard boards he threw her, and used his knee as an iron ram to beat open the two-leaved gate of her chastity. Her husbands dead body he made a pillow to his abomination. Conjecture the rest; my words stick fast in the mire, and are clean tired; would I had never undertook this tragical tale. Whatsoever is born, is born to have an end. Thus ends my tale; his whorish lust was glutted, his beastly desire satisfied; what in the house of any worth was carriageable, he put up, and went his way. Let not your sorrow die, you that have read the proem and narration of this elegiacal history. Show you have quick wits in sharp conceit of compassion. A woman that hath viewed all her children sacrificed before her eyes, & after the first was slain, wiped the sword with her apron to prepare it for the cleanly murder of the second, and so on forward till it came to the empiercing of the seventeenth of her loins, will you not give her great allowance of anguish? This woman, this matron, this forsaken Heraclide, having buried fourteen children in five days, whose eyes she howlingly closed, & caught many wrinkles with funeral kisses, besides having her husband within a day after laid forth as a comfortless corse, a carrionly block, that could neither eat with her, speak with her, nor weep with her, is she not to be borne withal though her body swell with a tympany of tears, though her speech be as impatient as unhappy Hecubas, though her head raves and her brain dote? Devise with yourselves that you see a corse rising from his hearse after he is carried to church, & such another suppose Heraclide to be, rising from the couch of enforced adultery. Her eyes were dim, her cheeks bloodless, her breath smelled earthy, her countenance was ghastly. Up she rose after she was deflowered, but loath she arose, as a reprobate soul rising to the day of judgement. Looking on the tone side as she rose, she spied her husbands body lying under her head; ah, then she bewailed, as Cephalus when he had killed Procris unwittingly, or Oedipus when ignorantly he had slain his father, & known his mother incestuously. This was her subdued reasons discourse. Have I lived to make my husbands body the bier to carry me to hell? Had filthy pleasure no other pillow to lean upon but his spreaded limbs? On thy flesh my fault shall be imprinted at the day of resurrection. O beauty, the bait ordained to ensnare the irreligious; rich men are robbed for their wealth, women are dishonested for being too fair. No blessing is beauty, but a curse; cursed be the time that my mother brought me forth to tempt. The serpent in paradise did no more; the serpent in paradise is damned
sempiternally; why should not I hold myself damned (if predestinations opinions be true), that am predestinate to this horrible abuse? The hog dieth presently if he loseth an eye; with the hog have I wallowed in the mire; I have lost my eye of honesty; it is clean plucked out with a strong hand of unchastity; what remaineth but I die? Die I will, though life be unwilling; no recompense is there for me to redeem my compelled offence, but with a rigorous compelled death. Husband, Ill be thy wife in heaven; let not thy pure deceased spirit despise me when we meet, because I am tyrannously polluted. The devil, the belier of our frailty, and common accuser of mankind, cannot accuse me, though he would, of unconstrained submitting. If any guilt be mine, this is my fault, that I did not deform my face ere it should so impiously allure. Having passioned thus awhile, she hastily ran and looked herself in her glass, to see if her sin were not written on her forehead; with looking, she blushed, though none looked upon her but her own reflected image. Then began she again, Heu quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu, How hard is it not to bewray a mans fault by his forehead? Myself do but behold myself, and yet I blush; then, God beholding me, shall not I be ten times more ashamed? The angels shall hiss at me, the saints and martyrs fly from me; yea, God himself shall add to the devils damnation because he suffered such a wicked creature to come before him. Agamemnon, thou wert an infidel, yet when thou wentst to the Trojan war, thou leftst a musician at home with thy wife, who by playing the foot spondaeus till thy return, might keep her in chastity. My husband going to war with the devil and his enticements, when he surrendered, left no musician with me, but mourning and melancholy; had he left any, as Aegisthus killed Agamemnons musician ere he could be successful, so surely would he have been killed ere this Aegistus surceased. My distressed heart, as the hart whenas he loseth his horns is astonied, and sorrowfully runneth to hide himself, so be thou afflicted and distressed; hide thyself under the Almightys wings of mercy; sue, plead, entreat; grace is never denied to them that ask. It may be denied; I may be a vessel ordained to dishonour. The only repeal we have from Gods undefinite chastisement is to chastise ourselves in this world, and I will; naught but death be my penance, gracious and acceptable may it be; my hand and my knife shall manumit me out of the horror of mind I endure. Farewell, life, thou hast lent me nothing but sorrow. Farewell, sin-sowed flesh, that hast more weeds than flowers, more woes than joys. Point, pierce; edge, enwiden; I patiently afford thee a sheath; spur forth my soul to mount post to heaven. Jesu, forgive me; Jesu, receive me. So (throughly stabbed) fell she down, and knocked her head against her husbands body, wherewith he, not having been aired his full four and twenty hours, start as out of a dream, while I through a cranny of my upper chamber unseeled, had beheld all this sad spectacle. Awaking, he rubbed his head to and fro, and wiping his eyes with his hand, began to look about him. Feeling something lie heavy on his breast, he turned it off, and getting upon his legs, lighted a candle.
Here beginneth my purgatory. For he, good man, coming into the hall with the candle, and spying his wife with her hair about her ears, defiled and massacred, and his simple zany Capestrano run through, took a halberd in his hand, and running from chamber to chamber to search who in his house was likely to do it, at length found me lying on my bed, the door locked to me on the outside, and my rapier unsheathed in the window, wherewith he straight conjectured it was I, and calling the neighbours hard by, said that I had caused myself to be locked into my chamber after that sort, sent away my courtesan whom I called my wife, and made clean my rapier because I would not be suspected. Upon this was I laid in prison, should have been hanged, was brought to the ladder, had made a ballad for my farewell in a readiness called Wiltons wantonness, and yet for all that scaped dancing in a hempen circle. He that hath gone through many perils and returned safe from them, makes but a merriment to dilate them. I had the knot under my ear, there was fair play, the hangman had one halter, another about my neck was fastened to the gallows, the riding device was almost thrust home, and his foot on my shoulder to press me down, when I made my saintlike confession as you have heard before, that such and such men at such an hour brake into the house, slew the zany, took my courtesan, locked me into my chamber, ravished Heraclide, and finally how she slew herself. Present at the execution was there a banished English earl, who hearing that a countryman of his was to suffer for such a notable murder, came to hear his confession, and see if he knew him. He had not heard me tell half of that I have recited but he craved audience, and desired the execution might be stayed. Not two days since it is, gentlemen and noble Romans (said he) since, going to be let blood in a barbers shop against the infection, all on sudden in a great tumult and uproar was there brought in one Bartol, an Italian, grievously wounded and bloody. I, seeming to commiserate his harms, courteously questioned him with what ill debtors he had met, or how or by what casualty he came to be so arrayed. O (quoth he), long have I lived sworn brothers in sensuality with one Esdras of Granado; five hundred rapes and murders have we committed betwixt us. When our iniquities were grown to the height, and God had determined to countercheck our amity, we came to the house of Johannes de Imola (whom this young gentleman hath named); there did he justify all those rapes in manner and form as the prisoner here hath confessed. But lo, an accident after, which neither he nor this audience is privy to. Esdras of Granado, not content to have ravished the matron Heraclide, and robbed her, after he had betook him from thence to his heels, lighted on his companion Bartol with his courtesan, whose pleasing face he had scarce winkingly glanced on, but he picked a quarrel with Bartol to have her from him. On this quarrel they fought, Bartol was wounded to the death, Esdras fled, and the fair dame left to go whither she would. This, Bartol in the barbers shop freely acknowledged, as both the barber and his man and other here present can amply depose. Deposed they were; their oaths went for current; I was quit by proclamation; to the banished earl I came to render thanks, when thus he examined and schooled me.
Countryman, tell me, what is the occasion of thy straying so far out of England to visit this strange nation? If it be languages, thou mayest learn them at home; naught but lasciviousness is to be learned here. Perhaps, to be better accounted of than other of thy condition, thou ambitiously undertakest this voyage; these insolent fancies are but Icarus feathers, whose wanton wax, melted against the sun, will betray thee into a sea of confusion. The first traveller was Cain, and he was called a vagabond runagate on the face of the earth. Travel (like the travail wherein smiths put wild horses when they shoe them) is good for nothing but to tame and bring men under. God had no greater curse to lay upon the Israelites than by leading them out of their own country to live as slaves in a strange land. That which was their curse, we Englishmen count our chief blessedness; he is nobody that hath not travelled; we had rather live as slaves in another land, crouch and cap, and be servile to every jealous Italians and proud Spaniards humour where we may neither speak, look, nor do anything but what pleaseth them, than live as freemen and lords in our own country. He that is a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing, and if this be not the highest step of thraldom, there is no liberty or freedom. It is but a mild kind of subjection to be the servant of one master at once, but when thou hast a thousand thousand masters, as the veriest botcher, tinker or cobbler freeborn will domineer over a foreigner, and think to be his better or master in company, then shalt thou find there is no such hell as to leave thy fathers house (thy natural habitation) to live in the land of bondage. If thou dost but lend half a look to a Romans or Italians wife, thy porridge shall be prepared for thee, and cost thee nothing but thy life. Chance some of them break a bitter jest on thee, and thou retortst it severely, or seemest discontented, go to thy chamber and provide a great banquet, for thou shalt be sure to be visited with guests in a mask the next night, when in kindness and courtship thy throat shall be cut, and the doers return undiscovered. Nothing so long of memory as a dog; these Italians are old dogs, & will carry an injury a whole age in memory; I have heard of a box on the ear that hath been revenged thirty year after. The Neapolitan carrieth the bloodiest mind, and is the most secret fleering murderer, whereupon it is grown to a common proverb, Ill give him the Neapolitan shrug, when one intends to play the villain and make no boast of it. The only precept that a traveller hath most use of, and shall find most ease in, is that of Epicharchus [sic?], Vigila, & memor sis ne quid credas, Believe nothing, trust no man, yet seem thou as thou swallowedst all, suspectedst none, but wert easy to be gulled by everyone. Multi fallere docuerunt (as Seneca saith) dum timent falli, Many by showing their jealous suspect of deceit have made men seek more subtle means to deceive them.
Alas, our Englishmen are the plainest-dealing souls that ever God put life in; they are greedy of news, and love to be fed in their humours and hear themselves flattered the best that may be. Even as Philemon, a comic poet, died with extreme laughter at the conceit of seeing an ass eat figs, so have the Italians no such sport as to see poor English asses, how soberly they swallow Spanish figs, devour any hook baited for them. He is not fit to travel that cannot, with the Candians, live on serpents, make nourishing food even of poison. Rats and mice engender by licking one another; he must lick, he must crouch, he must cog, lie, and prate, that either in the court or a foreign country will engender and come to preferment. Be his feature what it will, if he be fair-spoken he winneth friends. Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Vlysses: Ulysses, the long traveller, was not amiable, but eloquent. Some allege they travel to learn wit, but I am of this opinion, that as it is not possible for any man to learn the art of memory, whereof Tully, Quintilian, Seneca and Hermannus Buschius have written so many books, except he have a natural memory before, so is it not possible for any man to attain any great wit by travel, except he have the grounds of it rooted in him before. That wit which is thereby to be perfected or made staid is nothing but Experientia longa malorum, the experience of many evils; the experience that such a man lost his life by this folly, another by that, such a young gallant consumed his substance on such a courtesan, these courses of revenge a merchant of Venice took against a merchant of Ferrara, and this point of justice was showed by the Duke upon the murderer. What is here but we may read in books, and a great deal more too, without stirring our feet out of a warm study? Vobis alii ventorum praelia narrent (saith Ovid), Quasque Scilla infestat, quasue Charybdis aquas. Let others tell you wonders of the wind, How Scilla or Charybdis is inclined. -vos quod quisque loquetur Credite. Believe you what they say, but never try. So let others tell you strange accidents, treasons, poisonings, close packings in France, Spain and Italy; it is no harm for you to hear of them, but come not near them. What is there in France to be learned more than in England but falsehood in fellowship, perfect slovenry, to love no man but for my pleasure, to swear Ah, par la mort Dieu when a mans hams are scabbed. For the idle traveller (I mean not for the soldier), I have known some that have continued there by the space of half a dozen years, and when they come home they have hid a little wearish lean face under a broad French hat, kept a terrible coil with the dust in the street in their long cloaks of grey paper, and spoke English strangely. Naught else have they profited by their travel, save learned to distinguish of the true Bordeaux grape, and know a cup of neat Gascoigne wine from wine of Orleans; yea, and peradventure this also, to esteem of the pox as a pimple, to wear a velvet patch on their face, and walk melancholy with their arms folded. From Spain what bringeth our traveller? A skull-crowned hat of the fashion of an old deep porringer, a diminutive aldermans ruff with short strings like the droppings of a mans nose, a close-bellied doublet coming down with a peak behind as far as the
crupper, and cut off before by the breastbone like a partlet or neckercher, a wide pair of gaskins which ungathered would make a couple of womens riding-kirtles, huge hangers that have half a cow-hide in them, a rapier that is lineally descended from half a dozen dukes at the least. Let his cloak be as long or as short as you will; if long, it is faced with Turkey grogram ravelled; if short, it hath a cape like a calfs tongue, and is not so deep in his whole length, nor hath so much cloth in it, I will justify, as only the standing-cape of a Dutchmans cloak. I have not yet touched all, for he hath in either shoe as much taffeta for his tyings as would serve for an ancient, which serveth him (if you will have the mystery of it) of the own accord for a shoe-rag. A soldier & a braggart he is (thats concluded); he jetteth strutting, dancing on his toes with his hands under his sides. If you talk with him, he makes a dish-cloth of his own country in comparison of Spain, but if you urge him more particularly wherein it exceeds, he can give no instance but in Spain they have better bread than any we have, when (poor hungry slaves) they may crumble it into water well enough, & make misers with it, for they have not a good morsel of meat except it be salt pilchards to eat with it all the year long, and, which is more, they are poor beggars, and lie in foul straw every night. Italy, the paradise of the earth and the epicures heaven, how doth it form our young master? It makes him to kiss his hand like an ape, cringe his neck like a starveling, and play at hey-pass, repass, come aloft when he salutes a man. From thence he brings the art of atheism, the art of epicurizing, the art of whoring, the art of poisoning, the art of sodomitry. The only probable good thing they have to keep us from utterly condemning it is that it maketh a man an excellent courtier, a curious carpet-knight, which is, by interpretation, a fine close lecher, a glorious hypocrite. It is now a privy note amongst the better sort of men, when they would set a singular mark or brand on a notorious villainy, to say, he hath been in Italy. With the Dane and the Dutchman I will not encounter, for they are simple honest men that, with Danaus daughters, do nothing but fill bottomless tubs, & will be drunk & snort in the midst of dinner; he hurts himself only that goes thither; he cannot lightly be damned, for the vintners, the brewers, the maltmen and ale-wives pray for him. Pitch and pay, they will pray all day; score & borrow, they will wish him much sorrow. But lightly a man is neer the better for their prayers, for they commit all deadly sin for the most part of them in mingling their drink, the vintners in the highest degree. Why jest I in such a necessary persuasive discourse? I am a banished exile from my country, though near linked in consanguinity to the best, an earl born by birth, but a beggar now as thou seest. These many years in Italy have I lived an outlaw. Awhile I had a liberal pension of the Pope, but that lasted not, for he continued not; one succeeded him in his chair that cared neither for Englishmen nor his own countrymen. Then was I driven to pick up my crumbs among the cardinals, to implore the benevolence & charity of all the dukes of Italy, whereby I have since made a poor shift to live, but so live as I wish myself a thousand times dead. Cum patriam amisi, tunc me periisse putato: When I was banished, think I caught my bane.
The sea is the native soil to fishes; take fishes from the sea, they take no joy, nor thrive, but perish straight. So likewise the birds removed from the air (the abode whereto they were born), the beasts from the earth, and I from England. Can a lamb take delight to be suckled at the breasts of a she-wolf? I am a lamb nourished with the milk of wolves, one that, with the Ethiopians inhabiting over against Meroe, feed on nothing but scorpions; use is another nature, yet ten times more contentive were nature restored to the kingdom from whence she is excluded. Believe me, no air, no bread, no fire, no water doth a man any good out of his own country. Cold fruits never prosper in a hot soil, nor hot in a cold. Let no man for any transitory pleasure sell away the inheritance he hath of breathing in the place where he was born. Get thee home, my young lad, lay thy bones peaceably in the sepulchre of thy fathers, wax old in overlooking thy grounds, be at hand to close the eyes of thy kindred. The devil and I am desperate, he of being restored to heaven, I of being recalled home. Here he held his peace and wept. I, glad of any opportunity of a full point to part from him, told him I took his counsel in worth; what lay in me to requite in love should not be lacking. Some business that concerned me highly called me away very hastily, but another time I hoped we should meet. Very hardly he let me go, but I earnestly overpleading my occasions, at length he dismissed me, told me where his lodging was, and charged me to visit him without excuse very often. Heres a stir, thought I to myself after I was set at liberty, that is worse that an upbraiding lesson after a breeching; certainly if I had bethought me like a rascal as I was, he should have had an Ave Mary of me for his cynic exhortation. God plagued me for deriding such a grave fatherly advertiser. List the worst throw of ill lucks. Tracing up and down the city to seek my courtesan till the evening began to grow very well in age, it thus fortuned: the element, as if it had drunk too much in the afternoon, poured down so profoundly that I was forced to creep like one afraid of the watch close under the pentices, where the cellar-door of a Jews house called Zadoch (over which in my direct way I did pass) being unbarred on the inside, over head and ears I fell into it, as a man falls in a ship from the orlop into the hold, or as in an earthquake the ground should open, and a blind man come feeling pad pad over the open gulf with his staff, should tumble on a sudden into hell. Having worn out the anguish of my fall a little with wallowing up & down, I cast up mine eyes to see under what continent I was, and lo (O destiny), I saw my courtesan kissing very lovingly with a prentice. My back and my sides I had hurt with my fall, but now my head swelled and ached worse than both. I was even gathering wind to come upon her with a full blast of contumely when the Jew (awaked with the noise of my fall) came hastily bustling down the stairs, and, raising his other tenants, attached both the courtesan and me for breaking his house and conspiring with his prentice to kill him. It was then the law in Rome that if any man had a felon fallen into his hands, either by breaking into his house, or robbing him by the highway, he might choose whether he would make him his bondman, or hang him. Zadoch (as all Jews are covetous), casting
with himself he should have no benefit by casting me off the ladder, had another policy in his head: he went to one Doctor Zachary, the Popes physician, that was a Jew and his countryman likewise, and told him he had the finest bargain for him that might be. It is not concealed from me (saith he) that the time of your accustomed yearly anatomy is at hand, which it behooves you under forfeiture of the foundation of your college very carefully to provide for. The infection is great, & hardly will you get a sound body to deal upon; you are my countryman, therefore I come to you first. Be it known unto you I have a young man at home fallen to me for my bondman, of the age of eighteen, of stature tall, straight-limbed, of as clear a complexion as any painters fancy can imagine; go to, you are an honest man, and one of the scattered children of Abraham; you shall have him for five hundred crowns. Let me see him, quoth Doctor Zachary, and I will give you as much as another. Home he sent for me; pinioned and shackled I was transported alongst the streets where, passing under Julianas the Marquess of Mantuas wifes window, that was a lusty bona-roba, one of the Popes concubines, as she had her casement half open, she looked out and spied me. At the first sight she was enamoured with my age and beardless face, that had in it no ill sign of physiognomy fatal to fetters; after me she sent to know what I was, wherein I had offended, and whither I was going. My conducts resolved them all. She having received this answer, with a lustful collachrymation lamenting my Jewish praemunire, that body and goods I should light into the hands of such a cursed generation, invented the means of my release. But first Ill tell you what betided me after I was brought to Doctor Zacharys. The purblind Doctor put on his spectacles and looked upon me, and when he had throughly viewed my face, he caused me to be stripped naked, to feel and grope whether each limb were sound, & my skin not infected. Then he pierced my arm to see how my blood ran, which assays and searchings ended, he gave Zadoch his full price and sent him away, then locked me up in a dark chamber till the day of anatomy. O, the cold sweating cares which I conceived after I knew I should be cut like a French summer doublet. Methought already the blood began to gush out at my nose; if a flea on the arm had but bit me, I deemed the instrument had pricked me. Well, well, I may scoff at a shrewd turn, but theres no such ready way to make a man a true Christian as to persuade himself he is taken up for an anatomy. Ill depose I prayed then more than I did in seven year before. Not a drop of sweat trickled down my breast and my sides, but I dreamt it was a smooth-edged razor tenderly slicing down my breast and sides. If any knocked at door, I supposed it was the beadle of Surgeons Hall come for me. In the night I dreamed of nothing but phlebotomy, bloody fluxes, incarnatives, running ulcers. I durst not let out a wheal for fear through it I should bleed to death. For meat in this distance I had plum-porridge of purgations ministered me one after another to clarify my blood, that it should not lie cloddered in the flesh. Nor did he it so much for clarifying physic, as to save charges. Miserable is that mouse that lives in a physicians house; Tantalus lives not so hunger-starved in hell as she doth there. Not the very crumbs that fall from his table, but Zachary sweeps together, and of them moulds up a manna. Of the ashy parings of his bread he would make conserve of chippings. Out of bones, after the meat was eaten off, he would alchemize an oil that he sold for a shilling a dram. His snot and spittle a hundred times he hath put over to his apothecary for snow-water. Any
spider he would temper to perfect mithridate. His rheumatic eyes, when he went in the wind, or rose early in a morning, dropped as cool alum-water as you would request. He was Dame Niggardise sole heir & executor. A number of old books had he, eaten with the moths and worms; now all day would not he study a dodkin, but pick those worms and moths out of his library, and of their mixture make a preservative against the plague. The liquor out of his shoes he would wring, to make a sacred balsamum against barrenness. Spare we him a line or two, and look back to Juliana, who, conflicted in her thoughts about me very doubtfully, adventured to send a messenger to Doctor Zachary in her name, very boldly to beg me of him and if she might not beg me, to buy me with what sums of money soever he would ask. Zachary Jewishly and churlishly denied both her suits, and said if there were no more Christians on the earth, he would thrust his incisionknife into his throat-boll immediately. Which reply she taking at his hands most despitefully, thought to cross him over the shins with as sore an overthwart blow ere a month to an end. The Pope (I know not whether at her entreaty or no) within two days after fell sick; Doctor Zachary was sent for to minister unto him, who, seeing a little danger in his water, gave him a gentle comfortive for the stomach, and desired those near about him to persuade his Holiness to take some rest, & he doubted not but he would be forthwith well. Who should receive this mild physic of him but the concubine Juliana, his utter enemy? She, being not unprovided of strong poison at that instant, in the Popes outward chamber so mingled it that when his grand Sublimity taster came to relish it, he sunk down stark dead on the pavement. Herewith the Pope called Juliana, and asked her what strong-concocted broth she had brought him. She kneeled down on her knees, & said it was such as Zachary the Jew had delivered her with his own hands, and therefore if it misliked his Holiness, she craved pardon. The Pope, without further sifting into the matter, would have had Zachary and all the Jews in Rome put to death, but she hung about his knees, and with crocodile tears desired him the sentence might be lenified, and they be all but banished at the most. For Doctor Zachary, quoth she, your ten times ungrateful physician, since notwithstanding his treacherous intent, he hath much art, and many sovereign simples, oils, gargarisms and syrups in his closet and house that may stand your Mightiness in stead, I beg all his goods only for your Beatitudes preservation and good. This request at the first was sealed with a kiss, and the Popes edict without delay proclaimed throughout Rome, namely, that all foreskin clippers, whether male or female, belong to the Old Jewry, should depart and avoid, upon pain of hanging, within twenty days after the date thereof. Juliana (two days before the proclamation came out) sent her servants to extend upon Zacharys territories, his goods, his moveables, his chattels and his servants, who performed their commission to the utmost tittle, and left him not so much as master of an old urinal case or a candle-box. It was about six oclock in the evening when those boothalers entered; into my chamber they rushed, when I sat leaning on my elbow, and my left hand under my side, devising what a kind of death it might be to be let blood till a man die. I called to mind the assertion of some philosophers, who said the soul was nothing but blood; then thought I what a thing were this, if I should let my soul fall and break his neck into a basin. I had but a pimple rose with heat in that part of the vein
where they use to prick, and I fearfully misdeemed it as my soul searching for passage. Fie upon it! A mans breath to be let out at a back door, what a villainy it is! To die bleeding is all one as if a man should die pissing. Good drink makes good blood, so that piss is nothing but blood under-age. Seneca and Lucan were lobcocks to choose that death of all other; a pig, or a hog, or any edible brute beast a cook or a butcher deals upon dies bleeding. To die with a prick wherewith the faintest-hearted woman under heaven would not be killed, O God, it is infamous. In this meditation did they seize upon me; in my cloak they muffled me, that no man might know me, nor I see which way I was carried. The first ground I touched after I was out of Zacharys house was the Countess Julianas chamber; little did I surmise that fortune reserved me to so fair a death. I made no other reckoning all the while they had me on their shoulders but that I was on horseback to heaven, and carried to church on a bier, excluded forever for drinking any more ale or beer. Juliana scornfully questioned them thus (as if I had fallen into her hands beyond expectation): what proper apple-squire is this you bring so suspiciously into my chamber? What hath he done, or where had you him? They answered likewise afar off, that in one of Zacharys chambers they found him close prisoner, and thought themselves guilty of the breach of her Ladyships commandment if they should have left him. O, quoth she, ye love to be double diligent, or thought peradventure that I, being a lone woman, stood in need of a love. Bring you me a princox beardless boy (I know not whence he is, or whither he would) to call my name in suspense? I tell you, you have abused me, and I can hardly brook it at your hands. You should have led him to the magistrate; no commission received you of me but for his goods & his servants. They besought her to excuse their error, proceeding of duteous zeal, no negligent default. But why should not I conjecture the worst, quoth she? I tell you troth, I am half in a jealousy he is some fantastic youngster who hath hired you to dishonour me. It is a likely matter that such a man as Zachary should make a prison of his house; by your leave, sir gallant, under lock and key shall you stay with me till I have inquired farther of you; you shall be sifted throughly ere you and I part. Go, maid, show him to the farther chamber at the end of the gallery that looks into the garden; you, my trim panders, I pray guard him thither as you took pains to bring him hither; when you have so done, see the doors be made fast, and come your way. Here was a wily wench had her liripoop without book; she was not to seek in her knacks and shifts; such are all women, each of them hath a cloak for the rain, and can blear her husbands eyes as she list. Not too much of this Madam Marquess at once; let me dilate a little what Zadoch did with my courtesan after he had sold me to Zachary. Of an ill tree I hope you are not so ill sighted in grafting to expect good fruit; he was a Jew, and entreated her like a Jew. Under shadow of enforcing her to tell how much money she had of his prentice so to be trained to his cellar, he stripped her, and scourged her from top to toe tantara. Day by day he digested his meat with leading her the measures. A diamond Delphinical dry lecher it was. The ballad of the whipper of late days here in England was but a scoff in comparison of him. All the colliers of Romford, who hold their corporation by yarking the blind bear at Paris Garden, were but bunglers to him; he had the right agility of the lash; there were none of them could make the cord come aloft with a twang half like him. Mark the
ending; mark the ending. The tribe of Judah is adjudged from Rome to be trudging; they may no longer be lodged there; all the Albumazers, Rabisacks, Gedions, Tebiths, Benhadads, Benrodans, Zedechias, Halies of them were bankrupts, and turned out of house and home. Zachary came running to Zadochs in sackcloth and ashes presently after his goods were confiscated, and told him how he was served, and what decree was coming out against them all. Descriptions, stand by; here is to be expressed the fury of Lucifer when he was turned over heaven bar for a wrangler. There is a toad-fish which, taken out of the water, swells more than one would think his skin could hold, and bursts in his face that toucheth him. So swelled Zadoch, and was ready to burst out of his skin and shoot his bowels like chain-shot full at Zacharys face for bringing him such baleful tidings; his eyes glared & burnt blue like brimstone and aqua-vitae set on fire in an eggshell, his very nose lightened glow-worms, his teeth crashed and grated together like the joints of a high building cracking and rocking like a cradle whenas a tempest takes her full-butt against his broadside. He swore, he cursed, and said, These be they that worship that crucified God of Nazareth; heres the fruits of their new-found gospel; sulphur and gunpowder carry them all quick to gehenna. I would spend my soul willingly to have that triple-headed Pope with all his sin-absolved whores and oil-greased priests borne with a black sant on the devils back in procession to the pit of perdition. Would I might sink presently into the earth, so I might blow up this Rome, this whore of Babylon, into the air with my breath. If I must be banished, if those heathen dogs will needs rob me of my goods, I will poison their springs & conduit-heads whence they receive all their water round about the city; Ill tice all the young children into my house that I can get, and cutting their throats, barrel them up in powdering beef tubs, and so send them to victual the Popes galleys. Ere the officers come to extend, Ill bestow an hundred pound on a dole of bread which Ill cause to be kneaded with scorpions oil that will kill more than the plague. Ill hire them that make their wafers or sacramentary gods, to minge(?) them after the same sort, so in the zeal of their superstitious religion shall they languish and drop(?) like carrion. If there be ever a blasphemous conjurer that can call the winds from their brazen caves, and make the clouds travail before their time, Ill give him the other hundred pounds to disturb the heavens a whole week together with thunder and lightning, if it be for nothing but to sour all the wines in Rome, and turn them to vinegar. As long as they have either oil or wine, this plague feeds but pinglingly upon them. Zadoch, Zadoch, said Doctor Zachary (cutting him off), thou threatenest the air, whilst we perish here on earth. It is the Countess Italiana, the Marquess of Mantuas wife, and no other, that hath complotted our confusion. Ask not how, but insist in my words, and assist in revenge. As how, as how? said Zadoch, shrugging and shrubbing. More happy than the patriarchs were I if, crushed to death with the greatest torments Romes tyrants have tried, there might be quintessenced out of me one quart of precious poison. I have a leg with an issue; shall I cut it off, & from his fount of corruption extract a venom worse than any serpents? If thou wilt, Ill go to a house that is infected, where, catching the plague, and having got a running sore upon me, Ill come and deliver her a supplication, and breathe upon her. I know my breath stinks so already that it is within half a degree of poison. Ill pay her home if I perfect it with any more putrefaction.
No, no, brother Zadoch, answered Zachary, that is not the way. Canst thou provide me ere a bondmaid endued with singular & divine qualified beauty, whom as a present from our synagogue thou mayst commend unto her, desiring her to be good and gracious unto us? I have; I am for you, quoth Zadoch. Diamante, come forth. Heres a wench (said he) of as clean a skin as Susanna; she hath not a wem on her flesh from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head; how think you, master Doctor, will she not serve the turn? She will, said Zachary, and therefore Ill tell you what charge I would have committed to her. But I care not if I disclose it only to her. Maid (if thou beest a maid), come hither to me; thou must be sent to the Countess of Mantuas about a small piece of service whereby, being now a bondwoman, thou shalt purchase freedom and gain a large dowry to thy marriage. I know thy master loves thee dearly, though he will not let thee perceive so much; he intends after he is dead to make thee his heir, for he hath no children; please him in that I shall instruct thee, and thou art made forever. So it is that the Pope is far out of liking with the Countess of Mantua, his concubine, and hath put his trust in me, his physician, to have her quietly and charitably made away. Now I cannot intend it, for I have many cures in hand which call upon me hourly; thou, if thou beest placed with her as her waiting-maid or cup-bearer, mayest temper poison with her broth, her meat, her drink, her oils, her syrups, and never be bewrayed. I will not say whether the Pope hath heard of thee, and thou mayest come to be his leman in her place if thou behave thyself wisely. What, hast thou the heart to go through with it or no? Diamante, deliberating with herself in what hellish servitude she lived with the Jew, & that she had no likelihood to be released of it, but fall from evil to worse if she omitted this opportunity, resigned herself over wholly to be disposed and employed as seemed best unto them. Thereupon, without further consultation, her wardrobe was richly rigged, her tongue smooth filed & new edged on the whetstone, her drugs delivered her, and presented she was by Zadoch, her master, to the Countess, together with some other slight newfangles, as from the whole congregation, desiring her to stand their merciful mistress, and solicit the Pope for them, that through one mans ignorant offence were all generally in disgrace with him, and had incurred the cruel sentence of loss of goods and of banishment. Juliana, liking well the pretty round face of my black-browed Diamante, gave the Jew better countenance than otherwise she would have done, and told him, for her own part she was but a private woman, and could promise nothing confidently of his Holiness, for though he had suffered himself to be overruled by her in some humours, yet in this that touched him so nearly, she knew not how he would be inclined, but what lay in her either to pacify or persuade him, they should be sure of, and so craved his absence. His back turned, she asked Diamante what countrywoman she was, what friends she had, and how she fell into the hands of that Jew? She answered that she was a magnificos daughter of Venice, stolen when she was young from her friends, and sold to this Jew for a bondwoman who (quoth she) hath used me so Jewishly and tyrannously that forever I must celebrate the memory of this day wherein I am delivered from his jurisdiction. Alas
(quoth she, deep sighing), why did I enter into any mention of my own misusage? It will be thought that that which I am now to reveal proceeds of malice, not truth. Madam, your life is sought by these Jews that sue to you. Blush not, nor be troubled in your mind, for with warning I shall arm you against all their intentions. Thus and thus (quoth she) said Doctor Zachary unto me; this poison he delivered me. Before I was called in to them, such & such consultation through the crevice of the door hard locked did I hear betwixt them. Deny it if they can, I will justify it; only I beseech you to be favourable lady unto me, and let me not fall again into the hands of those vipers. Juliana said little, but thought unhappily; only she thanked her for detecting it, and vowed though she were her bondwoman to be a mother unto her. The poison she took of her, and set it up charely on a shelf in her closet, thinking to keep it for some good purposes as, for example, when I was consumed and worn to the bones through her abuse, she would give me but a dram too much, and pop me into a privy. So she had served some of her paramours ere that, and if God had not sent Diamante to be my redeemer, undoubtedly I had drunk of the same cup. In a leaf or two before was I locked up; here in this page the foresaid goodwife Countess comes to me; she is no longer a judge, but a client. How she came, in what manner of attire, with what immodest and uncomely words she courted me, if I should take upon me to enlarge, all modest ears would abhor me. Some inconvenience she brought me to by her harlot-like behaviour, of which enough I can never repent me. Let that be forgiven and forgotten; fleshly delights could not make her slothful or slumbering in revenge against Zadoch. She set men about him to incense and egg him on in courses of discontentment, and other supervising espials to ply, follow, and spur forward those suborning incensors. Both which played their parts so that Zadoch, of his own nature violent, swore by the ark of Jehovah to set the whole city on fire ere he went out of it. Zachary, after he had furnished the wench with the poison, and given her instructions to go to the devil, durst not stay one hour for fear of disclosing, but fled to the Duke of Bourbon that after sacked Rome, and there practised with his bastardship all the mischief against the Pope & Rome that envy could put into his mind. Zadoch was left behind for the hangman. According to his oath, he provided balls of wild-fire in a readiness, and laid trains of gunpowder in a hundred several places of the city to blow it up, which he had set fire to, & also bandied his balls abroad, if his attendant spies had not taken him with the manner. To the straightest prison in Rome he was dragged, where from top to toe he was clogged with fetters and manacles. Juliana informed the Pope of Zacharys and his practice; Zachary was sought for, but Non est inventus, he was packing long before. Commandment was given that Zadoch, whom they had under hand and seal of lock and key should be executed with all the fiery torments that could be found out. To make short work, for I am sure I have wearied all my readers. To the execution place was he bought, where first and foremost he was stripped, then on a sharp iron stake fastened in the ground he had his fundament pitched, which stake ran up along into the body like a spit; under his armholes two of like sort; a great bonfire they made round about him, wherewith his flesh roasted, not burned, and ever as with the heat his skin
blistered, the fire was drawn aside, and they basted him with a mixture of aquafortis, alum-water, and mercury sublimatum, which smarted to the very soul of him, and searched him to the marrow. Then did they scourge his back parts so blistered and basted with burning whips of red-hot wire; his head they nointed over with pitch and tar, and so inflamed it. To his privy members they tied streaming fire-works; the skin from the crest of the shoulder, as also from his elbows, his huckle-bones, his knees, his ankles, they plucked and gnawed off with sparkling pincers; his breast and his belly with sealskins they grated over, which as fast as they grated and rawed, one stood over & laved with smiths cindery water & aqua-vitae; his nails they half raised up, and then underpropped them with sharp pricks, like a tailors shop-window half open on a holiday; every one of his fingers they rent up to the wrist; his toes they brake off by the roots, and let them still hang by a little skin. In conclusion, they had a small oil fire, such as men blow light bubbles of glass with, and beginning at his feet, they let him lingeringly burn up limb by limb till his heart was consumed, and then he died. Triumph women, this was the end of the whipping Jew, contrived by a woman, in revenge of two women, herself and her maid. I have told you, or should tell you, in what credit Diamante grew with her mistress. Juliana never dreamed but she was an authentical maid; she made her the chief of her bedchamber; she appointed none but her to look in to me, & serve me of such necessaries as I lacked. You must suppose when we met there was no small rejoicing on either part, much like the three brothers that went three several ways to seek their fortunes, & at the years end at those three cross-ways met again, and told one another how they sped; so after we had been long asunder seeking our fortunes, we commented one to another most kindly what cross haps had encountered us. Neer a six hours but the Countess cloyed me with her company. It grew to this pass, that either I must find out some miraculous means of escape, or drop away in a consumption, as one pined for lack of meat; I was clean spent and done, there was no hope of me. The year held on his course to doomsday, when Saint Peters day dawned. That day is a day of supreme solemnity in Rome, when the embassador of Spain comes and presents a milk-white jennet to the Pope that kneels down upon his own accord in token of obeisance and humility before him, and lets him stride on his back as easy as one strides over a block; with this jennet is offered a rich purse of a yard length, full of Peter-pence. No music that hath the gift of utterance but sounds all the while; copes and costly vestments deck the hoarsest and beggarliest singing man, not a clerk or sexton is absent, no, nor a mule nor a foot-cloth belonging to any cardinal but attends on the tail of the triumph. The Pope himself is borne in his pontificalibus through the Burgo (which is the chief street in Rome) to the embassadors house to dinner, and thither resorts all the assembly, where, if a poet should spend all his lifetime in describing a banquet, he could not feast his auditors half so well with words as he doth his guests with junkets. To this feast Juliana addressed herself like an angel; in a litter of green needlework wrought like an arbour and open on every side was she borne by four men, hidden under cloth rough plushed and woven like eglantine and woodbine. At the four corners it was topped with four round crystal cages of nightingales. For footmen, on either side of her
went four virgins clad in lawn, with lutes in their hands, playing. Next before her, two and two in order, a hundred pages in suits of white cypress and long horsemens coats of cloth of silver who, being all in white, advanced every one of them her picture enclosed in a white round screen of feathers, such as is carried over great princesses heads when they ride in summer, to keep them from the heat of the sun. Before them went a fourscore beads-women she maintained, in green gowns, scattering strawing-herbs and flowers. After her followed the blind, the halt, and the lame, sumptuously apparelled like lords, and thus passed she on to St. Peters. Interea quid agitur demi, how ist at home all this while? My courtesan is my keeper, the keys are committed unto her, she is mistress factotum. Against our countess we conspire, pack up all her jewels, plate, money that was extant, and to the water-side send them; to conclude, courageously rob her, and run away. Quid non auri saca fames, What defame will not gold salve? He mistook himself that invented the proverb Dimicandum est pro aris & focis, for it should have been pro auro & fama, Not for altars and fires we must contend, but for gold and fame. Oars nor wind could not stir nor blow faster than we toiled out of Tiber; a number of good-fellows would give size-ace and the dice that with as little toil they could leave Tyburn behind them. Out of ken we were, ere the Countess came from the feast. When she returned and found her house not so much pestered as it was wont, her chests, her closets, and her cupboards broke open to take air, and that both I and my keeper was missing, O, then she fared like a frantic bacchanal, she stamped, she stared, she beat her head against the walls, scratched her face, bit her fingers, and strewed all the chamber with her hair. None of her servants durst stay in her sight, but she beat them out in heaps, and bade them go seek, search they knew not where, and hang themselves, and never look her in the face more if they did not hunt us out. After her fury had reasonably spent itself, her breast began to swell with the mother, caused by her former fretting & chafing, and she grew very ill at ease. Whereupon she knocked for one of her maids, and bade her run into her closet, and fetch her a little glass that stood on the upper shelf, wherein there was spiritus vini. The maid went, &, mistaking, took the glass of poison which Diamante had given her, and she kept in store for me. Coming with it as fast as her legs could carry her, her mistress at her return was in a sound, and lay for dead on the floor, whereat she shrieked out, and fell a-rubbing & chafing her very busily. When that would not serve, she took a key and opened her mouth, and having heard that spiritus vini was a thing of mighty operation, able to call a man from death to life, she took the poison, and verily thinking it to be spiritus vini (such as she was sent for), poured a large quantity of it into her throat, and jogged on her back to digest it. It revived her with a very vengeance, for it killed her outright; only she awakened & lift up her hands, but spake neer a word. Then was the maid in my grandams beans, and knew not what should become of her; I heard the Pope took pity on her, & because her trespass was not voluntary, but chance-medley, he assigned her no other punishment but this, to drink out the rest of the poison in the glass that was left, and so go scot-free. We, careless of these mischances, held on our flight, and saw no man come after us but we thought had pursued us. A thief, they say, mistakes every bush for a trueman; the wind rattled not in any bush by the way as I rode, but I straight drew my rapier. To Bologna with a merry gale we posted, where we lodged
ourselves in a blind street out of the way, and kept secret many days, but when we perceived we sailed in the haven, that the wind was laid, and no alarum made after us, we boldly came abroad, & one day hearing of a more desperate murderer than Cain that was to be executed, we followed the multitude, and grutched not to lend him our eyes at his last parting. Who should it be but one Cutwolf, a wearish dwarfish writhen-faced cobbler, brother to Bartol the Italian, that was confederate with Esdras of Granado, and at that time stole away my courtesan when he ravished Heraclide? It is not so natural for me to epitomize his impiety, as to hear him in his own person speak upon the wheel where he was to suffer. Prepare your ears and your tears, for never till this thrust I any tragical matter upon you. Strange and wonderful are Gods judgements; here shine they in their glory. Chaste Heraclide, thy blood is laid up in heavens treasury; not one drop of it was lost, but lent out to usury; water poured forth sinks down quietly into the earth, but blood spilt on the ground sprinkles up to the firmament. Murder is wide-mouthed, and will not let God rest till he grant revenge. Not only the blood of the slaughtered innocent, but the soul, ascendeth to his throne, and there cries out & exclaims for justice and recompense. Guiltless souls that live every hour subject to violence, and with your despairing fears do much impair Gods providence, fasten your eyes on this spectacle that will add to your faith. Refer all your oppressions, afflictions, & injuries to the even-balanced eye of the Almighty; he it is that when your patience sleepeth, will be most exceeding mindful of you. This is but a gloss upon the text; thus Cutwolf begins his insulting oration. Men and people that have made holiday to behold my pained flesh toil on the wheel, expect not of me a whining penitent slave, that shall do nothing but cry and say his prayers, and so be crushed to pieces. My body is little, but my mind is as great as a giants; the soul which is in me is the very soul of Julius Caesar by reversion. My name is Cutwolf, neither better nor worse by occupation than a poor cobbler of Verona; cobblers are men, and kings are no more. The occasion of my coming hither at this present is to have a few of my bones broken (as we are all born to die) for being the death of the emperor of homicides, Esdras of Granado. About two years since in the streets of Rome he slew the only and eldest brother I had, named Bartol, in quarrelling about a courtesan. The news brought to me as I was sitting in my shop under a stall, knocking in of tacks, I think [sic?] I raised up my bristles, sold pritch-aule, sponge, blacking tub and punching iron, bought me rapier and pistol, and to go I went. Twenty months together I pursued him, from Rome to Naples, from Naples to Gaeta, passing over the river, from Gaeta to Siena, from Siena to Florence, from Florence to Parma, from Parma to Pavia, from Pavia to Sion, from Sion to Geneva, from Geneva back again towards Rome, where in the way it was my chance to meet him in the nick here at Bologna, as I will tell you how. I saw a great fray in the streets as I passed along, and many swords walking, whereupon drawing nearer, and inquiring who they were, answer was returned me it was
that notable bandetto, Esdras of Granado. O, so I was tickled in the spleen with that word, my heart hopped and danced, my elbows itched, my fingers frisked, I wist not what should become of my feet, nor knew what I did for joy. The fray parted, I thought it not convenient to single him out (being a sturdy knave) in the street, but to stay till I had got him at more advantage. To his lodging I dogged him, lay at the door all night where he entered, for fear he should give me the slip any way. Betimes in the morning I rung the bell and craved to speak with him; now to his chamber-door I was brought, where knocking, he rose in his shirt and let me in, and when I was entered, bade me lock the door and declare my errand, and so he slipped to bed again. Marry, this, quoth I, is my errand. Thy name is Esdras of Granado, is it not? Most treacherously thou slewst my brother Bartol about two years ago in the streets of Rome; his death am I come to revenge. In quest of thee ever since, above three thousand miles have I travelled. I have begged to maintain me the better part of the way, only because I would intermit no time from my pursuit in going back for money. Now have I got thee naked in my power; die thou shalt, though my mother and my grandmother dying did entreat for thee. I have promised the devil thy soul within this hour; break my word I will not; in thy breast I intend to bury a bullet. Stir not, quinch not, make no noise, for if thou dost it will be worse for thee. Quoth Esdras, whatever thou beest at whose mercy I lie, spare me, and I will give thee as much gold as thou wilt ask. Put me to any pains, my life reserved, and I willingly will sustain them; cut off my arms and legs, and leave me as a lazar to some loathsome spittle, where I may but live a year to pray and repent me. For thy brothers death the despair of mind that hath ever since haunted me, the guilty gnawing worm of conscience I feel may be sufficient penance. Thou canst not send me to such a hell as already there is in my heart. To dispatch me presently is no revenge; it will soon be forgotten; let me die a lingering death; it will be remembered a great deal longer. A lingering death may avail my soul, but it is the illest of ills that can befortune my body. For my souls health I beg my bodys torment; be not thou a devil to torment my soul, and send me to eternal damnation. Thy overhanging sword hides heaven from my sight; I dare not look up lest I embrace my deaths-wound unwares. I cannot pray to God and plead to thee both at once. Ay me, already I see my life buried in the wrinkles of thy brows; say but I shall live, though thou meanest to kill me. Nothing confounds like to sudden terror; it thrusts every sense out of office. Poison wrapped up in sugared pills is but half a poison; the fear of deaths looks are more terrible than his stroke. The whilst I view death, my faith is deaded; where a mans fear is, there his heart is. Fear never engenders hope; how can I hope that heavens Father will save me from the hell everlasting, when he gives me over to the hell of thy fury? Heraclide, now think I on thy tears sown in the dust (thy tears that my bloody mind made barren). In revenge of thee, God hardens this mans heart against me; yet I did not slaughter thee though hundreds else my hand hath brought to the shambles. Gentle sir, learn of me what it is to clog your conscience with murder, to have your dreams, your sleeps, your solitary walks troubled and disquited [sic?] with murder; your shadow by
day will affright you; you will not see a weapon unsheathed, but immediately you will imagine it is predestinate for your destruction. This murder is a house divided within itself; it suborns a mans own soul to inform against him; his soul (being his accuser) brings forth his two eyes as witnesses against him, and the least eye-witness is unrefutable. Pluck out my eyes if thou wilt, and deprive my traitorous soul of her two best witnesses. Dig out my blasphemous tongue with thy dagger; both tongue and eyes will I gladly forgo to have a little more time to think on my journey to heaven. Defer awhile thy resolution; I am not at peace with the world, for even but yesterday I fought, and in my fury threatened further vengeance; had I a face to ask forgiveness, I should think half my sins were forgiven. A hundred devils haunt me daily for my horrible murders; the devils when I die will be loath to go to hell with me, for they desired of Christ he would not send them to hell before their time; if they go not to hell, into thee they will go, and hideously vex thee for turning them out of their habitation. Wounds I contemn, life I prize light; it is another worlds tranquillity which makes me so timorous, everlasting damnation, everlasting howling and lamentation. It is not from death I request thee to deliver me, but from this terror of torments eternity. Thy brothers body only I pierced unadvisedly; his soul meant I no harm to at all; my body & soul both shalt thou cast away quite if thou dost at this instant what thou mayest. Spare me, spare me, I beseech thee; by thy own souls salvation I desire thee, seek not my souls utter perdition; in destroying me, thou destroyest thyself and me. Eagerly I replied after this long suppliant oration: Though I knew God would never have mercy upon me except I had mercy on thee, yet of thee no mercy would I have. Revenge in our tragedies is continually raised from hell; of hell do I esteem better than heaven, if it afford me revenge. There is no heaven but revenge. I tell thee, I would not have undertook so much toil to gain heaven as I have done in pursuing thee for revenge. Divine revenge, of which (as of the joys above) there is no fullness or satiety. Look how my feet are blistered with following thee from place to place. I have riven my throat with overstraining it to curse thee. My tongue with vain threats is bollen, and waxen too big for my mouth; my eyes have broken their strings with straining and looking ghastly as I stood devising how to frame or set my countenance when I met thee. I have near spent my strength in imaginary acting on stone walls what I determined to execute on thee; entreat not; a miracle may not reprieve thee; villain, thus march I with my blade into thy bowels. Stay, stay, exclaimed Esdras, and hear me but one word further. Though neither for God nor man thou carest, but placest thy whole felicity in murder, yet of thy felicity learn how to make a greater felicity. Respite me a little from thy swords point, and set me about some execrable enterprise that may subvert the whole state of Christendom, and make all mens ears tingle that hears of it. Command me to cut all my kindreds throats, to burn men, women and children in their beds in millions by firing their cities at midnight. Be it pope, emperor or Turk that displeaseth thee, he shall not breathe on the earth. For thy sake will I swear and forswear, renounce my baptism, and all the interest I have in any
other sacrament. Only let me live how miserable soever, be it in a dungeon amongst toads, serpents and adders, or set up to the neck in dung. No pains I will refuse, howsoever prorogued, to have a little respite to purify my spirit; oh, hear me, hear me, & thou canst not be hardened against me. At this his importunity I paused a little, not as retiring from my wreakful resolution, but going back to gather more forces of vengeance. With myself I devised how to plague him double for his base mind; my thoughts travelled in quest of some notable new Italianism, whose murderous platform might not only extend on his body, but his soul also. The groundwork of it was this: that whereas he had promised for my sake to swear and forswear, and commit Julian-like violence on the highest seals of religion, if he would but this far satisfy me, he should be dismissed from my fury. First and foremost he should renounce God and his laws, and utterly disclaim the whole title or interest he had in any covenant of salvation. Next, he should curse him to his face, as Job was willed by his wife, and write an absolute firm obligation of his soul to the devil, without condition or exception. Thirdly and lastly (having done this), he should pray to God fervently never to have mercy upon him, or pardon him. Scarce had I propounded these articles unto him but he was beginning his blasphemous abjurations. I wonder the earth opened not and swallowed us both, hearing the bold terms he blasted forth in contempt of Christianity: heaven hath thundered when half less contumelies against it have been uttered. Able they were to raise saints and martyrs from their graves, and pluck Christ himself from the right hand of his Father. My joints trembled & quaked with attending them, my hair stood upright, & my heart was turned wholly to fire. So affectionately and zealously did he give himself over to infidelity as if Satan had gotten the upper hand of our high Maker. The vein in his left hand that is derived from the heart with no faint blow he pierced, & with the full blood that flowed from it, writ a full obligation of his soul to the devil; yea, he more earnestly prayed unto God never to forgive his soul than many Christians do to save their souls. These fearful ceremonies brought to an end, I bade him ope his mouth and gape wide. He did so (as what will not slaves do for fear?); therewith made I no more ado, but shot him full into the throat with my pistol; no more spake he after; so did I shoot him that he might never speak after or repent him. His body being dead looked as black as a toad; the devil presently branded it for his own. This is the fault that hath called me hither; no true Italian but will honour me for it. Revenge is the glory of arms, & the highest performance of valure; revenge is whatsoever we call law or justice. The farther we wade in revenge, the nearer come we to the throne of the Almighty. To his scepter it is properly ascribed; his scepter he lends unto man, when he lets one man scourge another. All true Italians imitate me in revenging constantly and dying valiantly. Hangman, to thy task, for I am ready for the utmost of thy rigour. Herewith all the people (outrageously incensed) with one conjoined outcry yelled mainly, Away with him, away with him. Executioner, torture him, tear him, or we will tear thee in pieces if thou spare him. The executioner needed no exhortation hereunto, for of his own nature was he hackster good enough; old excellent he was at a bone-ache. At the first chop with his wood-knife would he fish for a mans heart, and fetch it out as easily as a plum from the bottom of a
porridge-pot. He would crack necks as fast as a cook cracks eggs; a fiddler cannot turn his pin so soon as he would turn a man off the ladder. Bravely did he drum on this Cutwolfs bones, not breaking them outright, but, like a saddler knocking in of tacks, jarring on them quaveringly with his hammer a great while together. No joint about him but with a hatchet he had for the nonce he disjointed half, and then with boiling lead soldered up the wounds from bleeding; his tongue he pulled out, lest he should blaspheme in his torment; venomous stinging worms he thrust into his ears, to keep his head ravingly occupied; with cankers scruzed to pieces he rubbed his mouth and his gums; no limb of his but was lingeringly splintered in shivers. In this horror left they him on the wheel as in hell, where, yet living, he might behold his flesh legacied amongst the fowls of the air. Unsearchable is the book of our destinies. One murder begetteth another; was never yet bloodshed barren from the beginning of the world to this day. Mortifiedly abjected and daunted was I with this truculent tragedy of Cutwolf and Esdras. To such straight life did it thenceforward incite me that ere I went out of Bologna, I married my courtesan, performed many alms-deeds, and hasted so fast out of the Sodom of Italy that within forty days I arrived at the King of Englands camp twixt Ardres and Guines in France, where he with great triumphs met and entertained the Emperor and the French King, and feasted many days. And so as my story began with the King at Tournay and Terouanne, I think meet here to end it with the King at Ardres and Guines. All the conclusive epilogue I will make is this, that if herein I have pleased any, it shall animate me to more pains in this kind. Otherwise, I will swear upon an English chronicle never to be outlandish chronicler more while I live. Farewell, as many as wish me well. June 27, 1593. FINIS.
Modern spelling edition copyright Nina Green July 2002.

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